Ranking pro bono II: 'We think it works, we still don’t want to do it'

Pro bono work should be "cab ranked" and all firms should participate if they have a practice area available. Every law firm should be able to provide a statistic to show their pro bono intake compared to their client work. It is also useful and possibly different/complicated than the norm - there should be clear-cut guidelines as to what categories of law should be covered by pro bono, such as: legal aid not being available; a hard case; a test case; a class action; requires a top law firm's expertise; law firm's refusal to take the case for a fee; no conditional fee arrangement is on offer; no win; there is a public interest issue; mediation is not acceptable as a choice issue, etc. Everyone should have access to justice and be subject to the rule of law regardless of ability to pay - there should be clear guidance and a clear pathway for a case to be cab ranked as pro bono work.

Lesley McDade -28 Jul 2008 | 01:00

Whilst many of your respondents believe rankings will "stimulate activity", I am not sure you are asking the right question.

Leaving aside the difficulty of developing an appropriate and auditable measure which will satisfy and engage law firms, the primary aim of pro bono work is (or should be) to benefit its recipients. This could no doubt be measured in terms of number of people "helped", amount of time invested by law firms etc. But none of these measures the actual impact on the actual people receiving pro bono assistance. Attempting to measure (and therefore standardise) firm's pro bono commitments is dangerous - with any scale, there is a strong temptation to switch to activities which register more highly on that scale, regardless of whether this is in fact a positive step.

A further point - many people are engaged in pro bono work for more altruistic reasons than winning their firm recruitment/client relations brownie points - have you considered whether these proposals might put people off, particularly if law firms are spurred to demand (possibly intrusive) details of time committed/people "helped" etc?

I am sure rankings would be great for the legal press and, indeed, many law firms. I'm yet to be convinced that rankings would assist current (or potential future) beneficiaries of pro bono work - is it not reckless to embark on this ranking project without some understanding of the possible impacts, beyond an online survey? Are those developing such ranking scales willing to take the risk that they could reduce the effectiveness of pro bono work?

Chris -29 Jul 2008 | 01:00

This debate I assume centres around commercial firms. What it seems to ignore is that legal aid firms in the high street are constantly doing pro bono work.

If you are paid less than £200 for an act of legal help, irrespective of the amount of work done, or if you are telephoned by a client for a 'bit of advice' then legal aid firms are doing millions of pounds of pro bono acts every year. These acts dwarf the initiaves of the magic circle and beyond.

David Taylor -29 Jul 2008 | 01:00

To Chris, I’d ask: why would a pro bono league be great for the press? It doesn’t matter that much to me, but law firms say that it matters to them - so what’s the problem with the obvious next step? My issue is how confused the debate is. I just don’t see any logical reason why law firms shouldn’t want to benchmark their own efforts, share best practice and stimulate the level of pro bono in general when previous experience suggests such initiatives would deliver. The whole motive issue about why lawyers do pro bono is a blind alley. Law firms are businesses, and transactionally-driven businesses at that. As such they should be acting out of enlightened self-interest, not some ill-defined concept of doing good in absolute terms. That notion - of harnessing the dynamism of profit-driven businesses for social ends - underpins the whole concept of corporate social responsibility, and rightly so. There’s no point in trying to get wolves to pretend to be sheep, but wolves can be useful sometimes. So, why on earth would you want to undermine this concept by getting law firms to go back to running pro bono like an ideologically-pure cottage industry?

Furthermore, I’d say the ‘purity’ of pro bono initiatives being quietly carried out is a myth. Law firms started incorporating pro bono into their marketing strategies years ago, so that bridge has already been crossed long before anyone comes up with a pro bono league.

And it is really that difficult to come up with a workable model to gauge firms’ pro bono commitments? US law firms certainly don’t seem to think so.

As to David’s point about high street firms – I’m not doing down the contribution of those firms. Far from it, solicitors struggling to make a living that still find time to do pro bono deserve more respect than their big City equivalents. But in the context of what large commercial firms are capable of, given their resources, it strikes me how much more could be achieved if the debate moved on. Several years back Guy Beringer gave it a try but, to my knowledge, the profession wasn’t massively successful at taking up the baton.

Alex Novarese -29 Jul 2008 | 01:00

I don't want law firms increasing their fees to subsidise pro bono activities with zero benefit to clients. Pro bono has value to clients in training junior litigators, who can get deposition and trial experience, so the litigators can learn without risking a client's stake. It wastes clients money to subsidise corporate, tax and regulatory associates to do pro bono, which is generally litigation and almost always provides zero training benefit for clients.

Furthermore, I'd think increasing pro bono for corporate, regulatory, and tax associates will increase costs to recruit and retain them because this experience is useless to them, and generally counterproductive, because their usual work provides better training and networking experience. These increased turnover costs hurt clients.

If partners want to contribute to charity, that is fine, but let them do it out of their own pocket, not my legal budget.

treble -31 Jul 2008 | 01:00

Alex, which UK firms have said that they have an interest in developing pro bono league tables?

I totally agree with Chris. Turning pro bono into a ranking tool will devalue it in the eyes of many volunteers. Most City firms were quietly taking on pro bono work long before it became 'fashionable' to do so, and to claim that this activity is only done for marketing purposes is cynical and inaccurate. I know of very few firms where lawyers are forced to do pro bono work: the vast majority do it it because they want to use their skills to help people.

League tables are not needed to encourage firms to "benchmark their own efforts, share best practice and stimulate the level of pro bono in general when previous experience suggests such initiatives would deliver", as Alex has suggested: this is all going on already. When it comes to pro bono, City firms collaborate in a wide variety of ways - Legal Week may not be aware of it, but that doesn't mean that it isn't happening!

Kindred -31 Jul 2008 | 01:00

Picking up Kindred's points: I didn’t mean to suggest that law firms have an interest in league tables - quite the reverse, because the current situation allows for very little means of objective comparison.

Neither did I suggest that pro bono was only being done for marketing; though I fail to see what is cynical about businesses being encouraged to be good corporate citizens - what’s wrong with getting a marketing upside? And no-one’s talking about forcing anyone to do pro bono - this is about encouraging it, which is a pretty important distinction.

We at Legal Week are extremely aware of law firms’ pro bono activities, because they tell us about them frequently and at great length. There’s nothing wrong with that, but let’s not pretend that it’s all being done quietly with no thought of profile or image benefit.

Treble: I’d imagine that there are many factors within law firms that have fuelled inflation of legal bills but, personally, I wouldn’t say excessive pro bono is one of them, so perhaps it’s a case of crossing that bridge if we ever come to it.

Alex Novarese -31 Jul 2008 | 01:00

I do see value in league tables regarding pro bono. They will help clients avoid using firms that subsidise legal work that has no training value and supports anti-capitalist organisations; I mean money is fungible, so you know the money is coming from someone and likely not the partners' pockets. The tables will also help lawyers avoid working at places that force them to do work with zero career value, except to some senior partner who is congratulated at a pro bono banquet.

And I think 'force' is the right word. I've never seen significant numbers of lawyers do pro bono voluntarily, so if a lot of people are doing it, the firm is requiring by direct orders, or informal sanction.

treble -31 Jul 2008 | 01:00

The point isn't to worry about who is on top, which should be its own reward. And if pro bono work ultimately becomes a "checkbox" what's wrong with that? (You can always do extra on top on evolving checkbox standards if you feel the need). The point is to highlight the selfish ****s at the bottom of the table so we can treat them appropriately.

Blowen -10 Jan 2009 | 00:00