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Lawyers continue pro bono service though work pressures mount

By Raju Chebium
CNN.com Correspondent

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Because of the booming economy and the increasing complexity of legal work, lawyers are hard-pressed to fulfill a core professional responsibility of providing free legal services to the poor, experts say.

In an era when many lawyers, especially those working for huge, big-city law firms, are working long hours to serve their paying clients, the temptation could be strong to cut back on pro bono work, experts acknowledge.

But law firms are responding to the challenge, the same experts say. Firms are once again refocusing on pro bono work, asserting that no matter how busy lawyers are, they must somehow find the time to help those who cannot afford to pay the soaring costs of legal representation, experts say.

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"Who needs the court system more? A large corporation or a single mother with little or no education and no pay?" said Esther Lardent, president of the Pro Bono Institute at the Georgetown University Law Center, and a nationally known expert on the subject. "Pro bono is giving meaning to the lives of these lawyers."

Critics say pro bono work on the decline

Not everyone in the legal community agrees that the pro bono commitment remains strong compared to years past. At a time when some 80 percent of the American public find the cost of legal representation too high, lawyers must do more pro bono work so that the ideal of equal justice for all becomes reality, they say.

Critics like David Stern, executive director of the National Association for Public Interest Law, are especially critical of the law firm culture of basing advancement decisions predominantly on how much money junior attorneys produce, not how much public service they perform.

Many experts on both sides of the fence say that in more idealistic times, like the 1960s, lawyers were eager to do a lot of pro bono work. But as U.S. society became more materialistic, so did the legal profession, critics say. And with more people heading to law school, the competition increased, prompting lawyers to focus more on winning more paying clients, not those who could not pay, critics say.

"Is (pro bono work) considered in the associate's evaluation? Will it be considered in their favor?" Stern said. "Unfortunately it is not the case. ... Most firms do not prize pro bono as a criterion for partnership. You can count them on one hand."

Pro bono in the top 500 firms

Lardent, also the American Bar Association's point person on pro bono issues, works with the nation's top 500 law firms.

About 150 law firms took up the Pro Bono Institute's challenge to increase pro bono work to 3 percent to 5 percent of the firm's yearly work load, Most of those firms fill out an annual pro bono questionnaire the institute prepares.

In 1997, the 134 respondents reported performing a total of 1.5 million hours of pro bono work, Lardent said. The 1999 total was 1.37 million hours -- with only 80 firms responding and more responses coming in, she said.

William J. Dean, executive director of Volunteers for Legal Service, which works on pro bono issues with the top 27 law firms in New York, said New York lawyers are doing pretty much the same amount of pro bono work as they did 10 years ago.

In 1999, the pro bono total was 420,000 hours, up from 415,000 a year earlier, according to Dean's figures. In 1990, Dean said, the pro bono total was 430,000 hours.

"To me, flat is better than down. When I say flat, that to me is not a disparaging comment," he said.

A survey by American Lawyer magazine of the top 100 law firms, many of them in New York, shows that many of them are not contributing the ABA-mandated minimum of 50 pro bono hours a year.

Roughly 50,000 lawyers spent an average of eight minutes a day on pro bono cases, according to the survey. That came to about 36 hours a year per lawyer, compared to 56 hours in 1992, the magazine reported.

The survey was cited in the New York Times in August, causing a stir in the legal community.

Michael Shuster, the pro bono coordinator for White & Case LLP in New York, which has offices in 26 countries, wrote to the newspaper that many firms are doing more pro bono work and are being creative about finding ways to increase public service opportunities.

"Increasingly, firms are joining with corporate clients to provide legal support for their civic contributions, particularly economic development in distressed communities. A second device is `externships' that allow lawyers to spend up to several months working for public-interest legal service organizations," he wrote.

"As American law firms have increased global operations, they have emphasized pro bono work in many countries that had no such tradition. At my firm, we make it clear that pro bono time counts when determining end-of-year bonuses, thus eliminating any perceived disincentive," he wrote.

The need for more pro bono service

Mauricio Vivero, spokesman for The Legal Services Corp., a federally funded agency and the nation's largest supplier of legal services to low-income people, said 50,000 volunteer lawyers worked with the agency in 1999, handling 85,000 pro bono cases.

That number has remained relatively steady over the years, he said.

"Flat is not bad because it doesn't mean down, but it sure is not good because the overwhelming need out there is not being met," Vivero said.

The need for pro bono work became especially pronounced in 1995, when Congress cut the LSC's $400 million budget, he said. This year, the budget is $305 million, or "less than $10 a poor person," Vivero said.

He said the bulk of pro bono work contracted out by the LSC is performed by small and medium law firms, including many sole practitioners.

Law firm culture and pro bono service

Stern, of NAPIL, said the pressure to bring in paying clients could lead to a lowered number of pro bono hours per lawyer.

Every lawyer is expected to perform a certain number of "billable" hours per year -- the hours for which lawyers charge clients. Most law firms do not count pro bono hours among the billable hours, reducing the incentive to take free cases, Stern said.

He urged firms to change the reward systems to encourage more pro bono work -- a sign that the firm truly believes that pro bono work is important and not just a chore, Stern said.

Such a move, he said, would lead to "happier employees, (who will be) more satisfied in their jobs if they spend time doing something meaningful."

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