Credit: REDPIXEL.PL/ShutterstockNot long ago, law firm pro bono operated on a case-by-case basis. A client in need found a lawyer or firm to offer its time, and together they sought justice. Individual crises, though, are often symptoms of systemic failures, and in recent years law firms have begun collaborating in an effort to address both.
“As firms have gotten more sophisticated about pro bono, they have asked the question, ‘How can we make the most impact?’” Ronald Flagg, Legal Services Corp. president and former pro bono counsel at Sidley Austin, says. “Traditionally, the measurement of their impact was solely in output.”
But now, rather than focusing on pro bono hours and cases handled, firms are targeting broader issues they can address, and partnering with their competition to do so.
Flagg notes several examples of firms teaming up in recent years, including “triage projects” in Richmond, Virginia, and Charlotte, North Carolina, which identified low-income residents’ unmet needs in a dozen different areas of the law, appointed a leader for each area and tasked them with recruiting attorneys to help. He also points to adopt-a-neighborhood programs in Kansas City and St. Louis, Missouri, focused on redeveloping communities, as well as a comprehensive effort in Minneapolis to address the needs of individuals reentering society from prison. In each case, multiple Am Law 200 firms joined with in-house departments and legal aid organizations to maximize their impact.
The shift toward more deeply analyzing pro bono involvement began with in-house departments, Flagg says, as they began to apply to pro bono work the same data-driven approach they applied to hiring outside counsel. Firms, in turn, began to think more strategically. “It’s a hopeful sign,” Flagg says. “At the end of the day, what you want out of pro bono work is positive changes in clients’ lives.”
For his part, Steven Schulman, pro bono leader at Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld and co-president of the Association of Pro Bono Counsel, identifies the wave of women and unaccompanied children coming from Central America in 2014 as a turning point in getting firms to organize together, as well as a small-business relief alliance formed after Superstorm Sandy hit New Jersey and New York in 2012.
Emily Goldberg, pro bono counsel at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, says she’s seen “a 360-degree amount of need” over the past few years that surpasses anything she’s seen before. She points to President Donald Trump’s 2017 travel ban as “the first wakeup call” that rallied firms together. Paul Weiss chairman Brad Karp says the Trump administration has fueled firms to band together.
“The challenges that we’re all confronting nowadays under the current administration are so enormous, the scope is so large, the issues are so breathtaking, the stakes are so high that it oftentimes is impossible for any single law firm, no matter how well-resourced or how well-intentioned, to mount a battle of the magnitude that is necessary to redress the wrong at issue,” Karp says.
He also recently called on firms to band together to address racial injustice in the United States in the wake of the alleged murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer.
The Association of Pro Bono Counsel has been a catalyst in the effort to unite firms and their pro bono leaders, regardless of the wrong they seek to redress, and Goldberg and her counterparts across the industry are learning quickly how to marshal their resources.
“It’s become a skillset in and of itself: how to build a project and scale it up so you’re not just helping 10 people, you’re thinking bigger,” Goldberg says. “How can I help a thousand people?”
"impact" - Google News
July 06, 2020 at 04:00PM
https://ift.tt/3iztH8z
Law Firms Are Collaborating With the Competition to Maximize Pro Bono Impact | The American Lawyer - The American Lawyer
"impact" - Google News
https://ift.tt/2RIFll8
Shoes Man Tutorial
Pos News Update
Meme Update
Korean Entertainment News
Japan News Update
Bagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "Law Firms Are Collaborating With the Competition to Maximize Pro Bono Impact | The American Lawyer - The American Lawyer"
Post a Comment