While pro bono work offers much needed help to society, Geoffrey Bindman says that it is no substitute for the practical backing of legal aid

In the early 1960s I spent my Monday evenings at a Citizens' Advice Bureau (CAB) - known then as a 'poor man's lawyer'.

The problems were usually housing, employment, immigration, crime or family related.

All were far removed from the experience at that time of myself and most of my colleagues, whose day jobs rarely confronted us with individual clients, let alone those with legal difficulties associated with poverty or social disadvantage.

The clients often gained helpful insights, and the lawyers gained by seeing an unfamiliar side of life.

But problems were rarely solved without a referral to a solicitor in regular practice.

That meant legal aid, because you cannot carry on a negotiation or a correspondence with an opposing party, let alone litigation, at a weekly evening session.

Serious legal problems need continual expert attention.

My pro bono contribution at the CAB was peripheral, and an inferior substitute for properly resourced legal representation.

We must harness the willingness of successful commercial lawyers to help improve access to justice for those without the means to pay.

The issue is how this can best be done.

Michael Napier, the Attorney-General's pro bono envoy, says it is an adjunct to, and not a substitute for, legal aid, and that 'pro bono should not be any form of substitute for public funding of legal services at the level the Treasury says the taxpayer can afford'.

Sadly, this approach takes for granted the polarisation of the profession.

Legal aid and the Community Legal Service are seen as the exclusive concern of the government and the embattled and marginalised band of solicitors who continue to do legal aid work.

In 1949, the price paid by the legal profession for avoiding the imposition of a national legal service was its commitment as a profession to manage legal aid.

Lawyers whose clients can afford to pay for their services have largely turned their backs on it.

In spite of structural changes since 1949, the ethical case for every solicitor to support legal aid remains clear.

Promoting pro bono does not address this obligation.

In the present dire state of legal aid, pro bono is like donating deck chairs to the sinking Titanic.

Part of the problem is lack of a mechanism for the profession to give financial support to legal aid.

In May 1994, the Law Society's pro bono working party proposed a voluntary fund (a 'legal aid foundation').

It envisaged contributions linked to firms' profit levels and their income from interest on client accounts.

Such a fund need not displace government responsibility but could provide research facilities, scholarships, grants and subsidies to set up and maintain legal aid practices in areas of need.

Nothing came of this.

It was feared that a parsimonious Treasury would use it as an excuse further to reduce legal aid funding.

Nine years on, we know that the government needs no excuse to cut the budget.

A commitment by the profession to put some of its profits into legal aid may encourage the government to do more.

Politicians can be complacent while the public believes that lawyers are greedy fat cats.

Donating money for legal aid could change this image.

Unapportioned interest on client accounts that goes into our pockets is a starting point.

The Law Society is to review this anomaly.

Sums - which as long ago as 1984 the National Consumer Council estimated at 40 million a year - could go to a legal aid foundation.

Instead of pro bono, the Attorney-General and Mr Napier should apply themselves to the much more vital task of getting the whole profession to give practical backing to legal aid and the Community Legal Service.

Geoffrey Bindman is the senior partner at London-based Bindman & Partners