Inside Counsel
July 1, 2013
“When Jane Sherburne joined The Bank of New York Mellon Corp. as general counsel in 2010, instituting a formal pro bono program was high on her list of priorities.
Now, just 17 months after the program’s founding, 110 BNY Mellon lawyers and staffers—or roughly 45 percent of the company’s attorneys—have logged 400 hours of pro bono work. Kaye estimates that the legal department has worked on about 35 projects in that time.
Some of these projects draw on the bank’s expertise in finance and business—e.g. a partnership with an outside law firm that provides microfinance help to women in Haiti—but others run the gamut from helping disabled veterans apply for benefits to assisting transgendered people in the process of changing their names.”