'Lawyers are beautiful people.' And that's official, because none other than the Attorney-General, Baroness Scotland, said so during last week's pro bono lurve-fest. She told delegates at a College of Law event that practitioners may be portrayed as 'money-grubbing' parasites, but even 'the crabbiest old lawyers still have the passion and commitment to want to change the world'.


Lord Phillips of Sudbury, the lawyer formerly known as 'Legal Eagle' during his 25 years of service on the Jimmy Young Show, reminisced about the practice he left in 1964, where the senior partner gave 25% of his time pro bono. This was the same senior partner, Lord Phillips claimed, who corrected a secretary's typing error. She had written that the client was to pay 9% interest 'per anus'. The senior partner crossed this out, noting that his client was 'already paying through the nose'.



Joss Saunders, head of legal at Oxfam, brought a more international flavour to the debate. Firms had helped him draw up a contract for transferring ownership of pregnant cows in Bosnia during the Balkan conflict, for example, and got the job done in just 30 minutes. And then there was help with helicopter-hiring arrangements in Papua New Guinea following the Pacific tsunami, girls' rights under international conventions in 30 jurisdictions worldwide, anti-trust complications in the global coffee trade and... You get the picture.



Closer to home again, the Lord Mayor of London and former Norton Rose senior partner, David Lewis, spoke about the 'old lady from Hackney' who, thanks to a lawyer's pro bono efforts, retained her life's savings from a 'rapacious credit card company'. Andrew Holroyd, Law Society President, observed that pro bono work was a win-win proposition. 'The consumer wins, society wins and the person doing the work wins.'



The last word goes to David McIntosh, chairman of the City of London Law Society. He remarked to the assembled throng at the Wig & Pen Award ceremony that it was 'nice to be among the access to justice club'. His members, he added, 'do care a tinker's (cuss) about justice and don't just talk about it'. Obiter raised a glass to that.



Rounding off the week's events at the first Joint National Pro Bono conference last Saturday, we return to the double act of the Attorney-General and Lord Phillips. Handing over to her fellow peer in a show of cross-party, lawyerly love befitting the theme of the week, Baroness Scotland told delegates: 'Pro bono crosses all boundaries. He forgives me for being Labour and I forgive him for being a Liberal.'



Lord Phillips, a solicitor and consultant at City firm Bates Wells & Braithwaite, smiled wryly before replying: 'I used to be Labour but they expelled me if you remember.' Ouch. However, Lord Phillips quickly restored the touchy-feely mood by immediately saying we are 'extremely lucky to have Patricia Scotland as Lord Goldsmith's successor'. Aaahhh.