The Law School contributes to the effort to promote pro bono work.

How can lawyers be inspired to donate more of their services to the needy? 

That’s the challenge Deborah Rhode, Ernest W. McFarland Professor of Law, has been wrestling with for the past six years. In 1997, as the new President of the Association of American Law Schools, she noted that more new lawyers were needed to provide crucial public interest legal services and established the Commission on Pro Bono and Public Service Opportunities in Law Schools. Subsequently, she surveyed 3,000 lawyers and conducted the first systematic national study, which is to be published next year, on the factors that lead lawyers to work pro bono. 

Rhode’s research doesn’t offer a silver bullet solution, but one conclusion that emerged is that law schools have a critical role in cultivating a commitment to pro bono. And so, last spring, responding to a proposal from students and faculty including Rhode, Stanford Law School adopted a policy to not only encourage students and faculty to work pro bono, but also to ensure that the School would work harder to provide meaningful volunteer opportunities. When students began classes in September, many voluntarily took the School’s new pledge to do at least 50 hours of pro bono legal work before graduating—and the new Director of Public Interest & Public Policy Programs, Diane Chin [see sidebar below], has pledged to help them reach that goal.

 “The American Bar’s commitment to provide legal services pro bono expresses all that is best in our profession,” remarks Rhode. “Law schools have a unique opportunity and obligation to inspire students to carry on that tradition.” 

The Law School’s program is not an isolated public relations ploy to grab headlines, but part of a growing nationwide effort, reaching from law firms to law schools, to respond to the enormous unmet need for legal services. Recent estimates suggest that a vast majority of low-income people who seek legal assistance are unable to find it. While there are many reasons for this gap, pro bono work has not responded to the increased demand. According to Rhode’s research, the average contribution for a member of the Bar is less than half an hour a week. 

Leaders of the legal profession are calling for a paradigm shift: to make pro bono work as much of a fixture in the life of law firms as quotas for billable hours. The ABA has issued a challenge to lawyers to perform 50 hours of pro bono work per year. Florida, Nevada, and Maryland now require state bar members to file annual reports on their pro bono work so that the public can see which lawyers are volunteering. And a number of law firms are upgrading their pro bono programs, allowing their lawyers to count pro bono hours toward hourly quotas. 

Take the Chicago-based firm Sonnenschein Nath and Rosenthal LLP. The firm’s managing partner, Duane Quaini ’70, Chair of the Law School’s Board of Visitors, announced in July that it had hired a full-time public interest partner to oversee its national pro bono program. Another change is that all partners on the firm’s policy and planning committee will be required to take on a substantial pro bono case, Quaini says. The firm has also doubled its maximum pro bono billable hours for associates to 200 hours, he adds. 

Quaini’s reforms are at the forefront of the changing attitude toward pro bono. There is a new awareness among law firms that they must shoulder greater responsibility for doing such work. That’s quite different from the late 1990s, when many lawyers believed that economic pressures made it impossible to take on pro bono cases. During that time, average hours of pro bono work dropped by one-third (at the largest firms for which information is available). Back then, many lawyers attributed the decline to the economic boom, which had them scrambling to serve paying clients. 

What caused many lawyers to rethink why pro bono was in decline was that pro bono hours didn’t quickly rebound when the economy stalled. As Rhode notes in her forthcoming study, Pro Bono: In Principle and in Practice: “Neither a good economy nor a bad economy is necessarily better for pro bono. Pro bono work is determined less by economic imperatives than institutional priorities.” And so over the last few years, some law firms have looked to find ways to make pro bono work as much of a priority as the desire to maximize billable hours. Some, for instance, have revised policies that did not credit public service toward billable hours or toward bonuses. 

Law firms’ motivation for such changes is practical, as well as altruistic. Strong pro bono programs can, for example, help firms’ recruiting and retention efforts. Associate Dean for Career Services Susan Robinson counsels students to look carefully at firms’ pro bono policies when weighing job offers. 

Pro bono cases can also help firms to give associates some hands-on litigation experience. Shannon Petersen ’00, a third-year associate at Latham & Watkins, was able to join with another junior associate in representing a disabled child in a civil trial against his school system. “I took depositions, examined witnesses on the stand, and presented the closing argument,” says Petersen. “I never would have been able to do that with a paying client.”

In addition, pro bono improves the reputation of the legal profession as a whole. In one survey of the general public, two-thirds of respondents indicated that greater provision of legal services to the needy was the reform that would most improve their opinion of lawyers. Rhode’s research also shows that participation in pro bono work can help lawyers to overcome the lack of job satisfaction that causes many to leave the profession, as well as improve morale overall at a firm. In an interview for her research, one lawyer elaborated on pro bono’s positive ripple effect: “Everyone feels that they touched a life. . . . No office picnics or parties can give you that.” 

At the Law School, Chin is preparing to debut a website with an expanded menu of pro bono opportunities for students. In years past, students volunteered in such programs as StreetLaw and the San Mateo County Legal Aid’s Volunteer Attorney Program, but the School is considering other options that would appeal to both students and lawyers at nearby firms. In recent months, for instance, the Stanford Community Law Clinic, which the Law School opened in East Palo Alto in January, started offering evening hours in which low income people can receive information about housing issues, employment rights, and entitlement benefits from volunteer law students and lawyers. 

In the first few weeks of the fall semester, Chin distributed registration forms for the Pro Bono Program advising that the Law School “expects its students and faculty to aspire to provide such service.” As the year progresses, she plans on working individually with students to find pro bono projects tailored to their specific interests. Along with helping to place the students, she will track the hours they work so that those doing 50 hours or more can receive formal recognition upon graduating. 

Whether such a change will lead to greater pro bono participation later in students’ careers remains to be seen. Rhode’s research suggests that well-designed law school programs can have an encouraging effect. In her survey, she found that lawyers who have a positive pro bono experience in law school are more likely to want to engage in pro bono activities in their professional practice. 

Rhode’s work, however, does not suggest that any single approach will best ensure a positive pro bono experience in law school. Her survey included alumni of six law schools— two with mandatory pro bono programs, two with voluntary pro bono programs, and two without any pro bono policy. When she looked to see what influence these programs had on their post-graduation pro bono activity, she found no correlation between the type of program adopted by a school and the level of pro bono participation among its graduates. 

The Stanford Law School faculty opted for a voluntary program after considerable reflection. While some professors contended that a mandatory program would convey pro bono’s importance, others questioned whether charitable behavior should be dictated. Ultimately, there was a consensus that launching a well-supported voluntary program was the best way to start. 

The debate on voluntary versus mandatory pro bono goes beyond law schools. In recent years the ABA has considered—and rejected—requiring members to do a set amount of pro bono work each year. In her study, Rhode observes that lawyers have been reluctant to make pro bono an obligation. Still, she notes that the ABA has stepped up its support for voluntary efforts to promote pro bono. Two years ago, the group adopted a minor language change on its rule guiding pro bono, adding a new sentence: “Every lawyer has a professional responsibility to provide legal services to those unable to pay.” 

True, the 15-word provision lacks teeth, but it establishes a principle. And without that, there can’t be a revolution in attitudes.