Pro plus

In the week of the gazette/ysg pro bono awards, Lucy Hickman examines how pro bono work is developing in the large firms

Sue Bucknall, director of the Solicitors Pro Bono Group (SPBG), is a woman on a mission.

In the last year, she has enrolled around 500 volunteers, from mostly large law firms, to participate in the LawWorks project, which matches lawyers with law centres to provide free legal advice.

Twenty such initiatives are already running in London, with three more scheduled to launch by September and plans to expand nationally in the next year.

A pro bono mediation scheme is also set to launch.

She says a big development on the pro bono front is the willingness of in-house lawyers to get involved.

'In-house lawyers haven't traditionally participated in pro bono.

There was the question of insurance [whether pro bono work was covered by solicitors' indemnity policies] and since there aren't so many of them, they often felt they couldn't leave the office.'However, Ms Bucknall says that many in-house lawyers expressed an interest in getting involved in pro bono, so to help facilitate them she has launched a series of initiatives, including partnership agreements, which allow them to team up with client solicitors to do the work.Also particularly appealing to in-house lawyers, she says, is the new LawWorks for Community project - scheduled to pilot in the London Borough of Southwark in September - which matches up solicitors with community groups in need of mostly business law advice.'The advantage of this is that commercial solicitors, who feel they cannot participate in our other schemes because, for example, they are not used to litigation, can get involved and do work that they are used to from their office.

This is particularly appealing toin-house lawyers.'The SPBG has also just won a grant (around 350,000, to be paid over three years) from the Lord Chancellor's Department and the Home Office to set up a Web site which, on completion in around two years, should be staffed by lawyer volunteers, who could answer legal questions on-line from organisations such as Citizens' Advice Bureaux.But it is still not enough for Ms Bucknall.

'I have made a pledge over the next three years to find 1,000 new solicitor volunteers.

I call it my Lawyer-A-Day scheme.

It's not the easiest of tasks.'However, despite all this activity, Ms Bucknall says that the SPBG is 'struggling a bit' since the Law Society withdrew its funding two months ago.'The Law Society said we should stand on our own two feet and withdrew all its funding.

That was our core funding.

It came as a bit of a shock.

We're now trying to get money from our membership.

We're doing our bit but it's not easy.'Many maintain that the Law Society should be more pro-active in encouraging pro bono work.

Yasmin Waljee, pro bono officer at City firm Lovells, says: 'The Law Society has essentially sub-contracted to the SPBG.

Pro bono is outside its sphere of influence.

It's disappointing; it should be more like the American Bar Association.

More leadership from the top would be good.'Few firms embrace the idea of mandatory pro bono hours for lawyers.

Last year, the Law Society rejected the idea of introducing aspirational targets for lawyers which would have set a minimum number of pro bono hours that a lawyer would be expected to do every year.Fiona Severs, Herbert Smith's community action co-ordinator, says: 'I know some people were disappointed that this was not introduced but I think it would have been a bit heavy handed and difficult for small firms.

'It's all right for big City firms - they have the manpower and resources to enable them easily to give up time to do pro bono work.

But to expect a two-man-band firm to give up, say, 50 hours a year would be a big undertaking.'None of the firms questioned imposes mandatory pro bono requirements but all report a rise in pro bono hours served, and an endless source of volunteers.

Last year, Allen & Overy lawyers notched up 12,232 pro bono hours, worth 2,577,325; Clifford Chance's London office alone does about 1,500 hours per month, worth more than 2 million; while Lovells does about 9,000 hours a year.The recent Taylor Root lifestyle survey of 1,000 lawyers around the country found that more than 70% were involved in some form of pro bono work, while 38% of firms have an organised programme.

However, it showed that the 100 partner-plus firms are the ones least likely to have such a programme; only 12% of them do so.

Nonetheless, four out of five of their lawyers engage in some form of pro bono activity, usually on their initiative.Ms Waljee says: 'In view of the fact that 13 of the top 20 firms have pro bono co-ordinators whis statistic does not seem accurate.' But she agrees that there is scope for further improvement.The range of pro bono projects in which firms are involved vary enormously.

For example, one Lovells initiative involved two trainees floating down the Thames on a barge, video-taping a business which was polluting the river by not storing its waste properly.And on behalf of Thames 21 - an organisation intent on cleaning up London's waterway - Lovells then sent a letter before action to the offenders warning them they were breaching the Environment Act.Lovells has also forced a change of Foreign Office policy in its defence of a Briton jailed in Thailand, who the firm maintains was a victim of a miscarriage of justice.

The Foreign Office has now agreed to petition foreign governments in such cases where before it would only do so if the prisoner was dying.Cathy Jones, Clifford Chance's community affairs manager, says her firm - which has just set up a pro bono unit in its Washington DC office - gets involved in matters ranging from manning law centres to reading to primary school pupils, or mentoring secondary school children.

Herbert Smith, meanwhile, is currently trying to rope retired partners into providing pro bono services.

Ms Severs says: 'They have got a lot of experience in the legal arena.

They come up to London a lot so there is no reason why we shouldn't get them involved in pro bono work.'There is little doubt that cynicism still permeates the public's view of law firms engaging in pro bono work, with many seeing it as little more than a marketing tool.But Ms Bucknall says benefits do flow to firms involved in pro bono work.

'A lot of it is to do with marketing, but it also works on retention of staff.

Firms with pro bono programmes place staff as a team, so staff stay longer.

It gives young lawyers interpersonal skills, which they won't get stuck in an office doing deals.

As long as more people are getting access to legal advice, whatever the reason, it is fine by me.'Allen & Overy's pro bono and community affairs officer, Shankari Chandran, says: 'The main reason we do pro bono work - which is often cynically received - is that we as a firm feel we have an obligation to do it.

We have the skills and the resources so we should do it.'Yes, it is to do with reputation as well, but the PR side is not the driving force.

We put a lot of time and money into it and although there is a marketing value, Allen & Overy was doing it for many years before it became cool.'Ms Bucknall says it is important to introduce the pro bono culture to lawyers early.

To this end, the College of Law recently launched a series of pro bono initiatives - such as legal clinics - which operate as part of its legal practice course curriculum.Ms Chandran says: 'They are a good idea.

People are still young, not jaded or disillusioned.

It's important to encourage people at that level to have a sense of responsibility.

You can't instil it in them - they have to have a leaning towards it.'Ms Severs agrees that such initiatives are a good idea but warns: 'I would be worried if the government felt it could rely on pro bono to ensure access to justice.

There is a slight danger in pro bono work that it relieves the government of its duty to a certain extent.'However, such an initiative is noticeably absent from the legal practice course being launched by the collection of big City firms, though as Ms Waljee says, a pro bono option may be added once the syllabus is 'bedded down'.Ms Jones says: 'We strongly believe LPC students should be taught that part of the discharge of their obligations should be pro bono.

It should be taught as part of the ethics content.'Ms Bucknall says: 'They think students should come with the particular skills required for a City firm, and have decided pro bono isn't one of them.

We think it is sad that they have decided not to do any pro bono as part of the course.

I am hoping to rectify that and see whether we can get pro bono introduced as a voluntary option.'It seems that, soon enough, law students aiming for the City firms will be learning to care.Lucy Hickman is a freelance journalist