Lexpert Magazine
By Bev Cline
April 27, 2015
“Pro Bono initiatives are not just for law firm lawyers — corporate counsel are increasingly getting involved and offering their own unique skill sets
“It was a good question, a very Canadian question, eagerly asked by a grade-eight student. ‘If I use the logo of my favourite hockey team on my website, will it violate their copyright?’ he queried, showing a level of sophistication about a complex subject that would stump many a grownup.
“For the team of in-house counsel from Hewlett-Packard (Canada) Co. (HP) speaking to the assembly of 75 Peel District School Board students in Mississauga, Ont., it was exactly the kind of inquisitiveness for which they had prepared. Says Jamie Telfer, counsel at HP in Mississauga, who spearheaded the program as pro bono captain for the company in Canada, ‘the students were aware enough to ask about the difference between copyright and trade-mark, what happens if you pull a picture from Google images to use for a school project, and spent a lot of time asking about privacy and cyberbullying.’
“Modelled after a similar program launched by HP in Germany, Telfer approached Pro Bono Law Ontario (PBLO) about adapting the online awareness program for middle-school students in Ontario. For Lynn Burns, Executive Director at PBLO in Toronto, Telfer’s query was not only welcome, but timely.
“In Ontario there are a great many individual in-house counsel undertaking pro bono work, for example in the Charitable Law Program assisting Ontario’s charities and non-profits with business law issues such as employment matters and commercial contracts, and Law Help Ontario, a program that provides summary advice to self-represented litigants in Small Claims and Superior Court. Yet there’s a real dearth of organized law department pro bono initiatives.
“In 2010, Sanjeev Dhawan, then President of the Association of Corporate Counsel Ontario (ACC Ontario), approached PBLO, says Burns, with the request to develop a signature project for its chapter. The chapter enrolled in PBLO’s Charitable Law Program. Later, in June 2012, PBLO and ACC Ontario launched the Adoptions Project, which supports family formation for children aging out of the foster care system and the families who cared for them, often since infancy or early childhood. Teams of lawyers from different corporations work with the parents and the children to complete formal adoptions (one side advises the parents, while the other advises the children). Burns says PBLO provides training, mentorships and case coordination to help volunteers who are working a little outside their comfort zone.
“As exciting as this initiative is, PBLO is working with only a handful of in-house legal departments. Further, calls from law departments proposing a new program, such as from Hewlett-Packard’s Telfer, are rare. Most often, in-house counsel calling to talk about initiatives come from two streams: lawyers who performed pro bono when they were at law firms prior to going in-house and/or from law departments in global or large organizations with established pro bono policies and mandates. Burns says PBLO has set 2015 as the year to put a real push on internally developing opportunities that it can offer to law departments.”