Ten years after the launch of the Law Firm Pro Bono Challenge^®, Corporate Pro Bono, a national partnership project of the Association of Corporate Counsel and the Pro Bono Institute^®, launched the Corporate Pro Bono Challenge℠, providing legal departments an opportunity to communicate and benchmark their commitment to pro bono legal service. The media attention and response to the Corporate Challenge and the pro bono services provided by Corporate Challenge Signatories has been outstanding, as pro bono in the corporate community continues to grow and companies address the challenges of structuring successful pro bono programs within their legal departments. An engaging article from the September 2008 issue of GC Mid-Atlantic profiles the increase in corporate pro bono and provides practical suggestions for legal departments seeking to develop or grow a pro bono program.

Law Departments Respond Well to Corporate Pro Bono Challenge
GC Mid-Atlantic
Ursula Furi-Perry
September 2008

Pro bono service isn’t just for law firm lawyers: law departments are quickly catching on to the benefits of providing public interest work.

Eighty-three percent of in-house counsel said they were allowed to use company time to participate in pro bono projects, according to a 2001 survey by the Pro Bono Institute, a nonprofit organization dedicated to pro bono participation and awareness. The same survey (the most recent one available) says 90 percent of in-house counsel reported that their general counsel encouraged pro bono participation.

In 2006, the Pro Bono Institute teamed up with the Association of Corporate Counsel to spearhead the Corporate Pro Bono Challenge, which puts law departments to the test in public interest work and pro bono participation. Law departments that sign on for the challenge make a voluntary statement of commitment to pro bono service; in return, they receive free information, guidance and tailored support from the Pro Bono Institute.

The challenge comes a decade after the institute’s widely successful Law Firm Pro Bono Challenge, which has resulted in over 23 million hours of pro bono assistance, according to the Pro Bono Institute’s Web site. The idea for the Corporate Challenge is similar: to increase pro bono participation among law departments and in-house counsel.

And the benefits of increased participation are tangible. “There is a business case for pro bono in-house,” says Esther Lardent, president of the Pro Bono Institute. “It definitely helps with team-building and morale. It gives people something in common that they can take pride in, talk about, and participate in.” It also makes the law department more visible in a positive way, Lardent added, and can help in-house counsel formulate better relationships with their client.

The business case is there, but pro bono work at law departments sometimes warrants more planning and special considerations by the general counsel, even when compared with law firm public service. Law departments often have less time, resources and manpower on their hands — that translates into the need to structure pro bono involvement in ways that differ from law firms. The following are some considerations for law departments that are trying to structure a pro bono program or increase existing pro bono participation.

Get the general counsel or other top management on board.

“Typically, departments that are really doing well are departments that have management at the top [involved,]” says Lardent; even if the general counsel isn’t mandating pro bono participation, he or she is certainly greatly encouraging it. Successful pro bono involvement also warrants continued oversight. Whether it’s a formal or informal program, Lardent says it requires a designated person or committee to keep an eye on it.

Finding the right projects, partners and parameters is also essential, according to Lardent. For example, if the law department has lawyers who typically deal with transactional law, then picking litigation projects might make in-house counsel less comfortable, and in turn reduce pro bono involvement. Conversely, though, choosing projects outside of the law department’s comfort zone can be a way to add variety to the work — smart lawyers with good skills can carry over to another area and may even enjoy doing something different, Lardent says. “What we encourage is to survey people and see what the skills and interest base are so you can match that,” she says.

Once you figure out what types of projects you’d like the lawyers in your department to undertake, decide on the partners you’d like to use, Lardent recommends. Would you prefer to establish a long-term relationship with a particular public interest agency, or would you rather team up with an outside law firm on their pro bono projects? Both types of partnerships have worked well for law departments in the past; the key is to decide what might be best for your department.

Use outside sources for help with landing and completing projects. Lardent says the Pro Bono Institute handles peer-to-peer referrals — not only can they help general counsel find the right pro bono partners, but they can also refer to other general counsel who are successfully participating in pro bono programs for their guidance and advice. Through its Web site, www.cpbo.org, the organization also offers a list of best practices and summaries of corporate pro bono models from law departments that are recognized for their innovation, endurance and accomplishment in pro bono work. Law departments can browse and advertise projects, publicize pro bono participation, learn about team projects, and find other resources.

“Making sure that one way or another, the department’s lawyers are covered by malpractice insurance” on pro bono cases, Lardent says, is another consideration that may be unique to law departments.

Also think about logistics: travel time and location, for example, and minimizing disruptions to in-house counsel’s everyday work. With law departments, bar memberships can also become an issue, Lardent adds, so before signing on to a pro bono project, be sure your attorneys have the requisite bar memberships to cover your bases.

For smaller law departments in particular, pro bono participation can boil down to a simple manpower issue. In fact, respondents to the 2001 survey above cited inadequate staffing and time constraints as the number one reason for not participating in pro bono projects.

Lardent says the Pro Bono Institute has worked with a number of smaller law departments successfully on pro bono projects. ACC chapters, she says, are a great vehicle to refer pro bono projects. In the Mid-Atlantic region, both the Greater New York chapter and the Western Pennsylvania chapter offer pro bono resources. Lardent also adds that some larger corporate departments such as Exelon have offered to partner up with small law departments on pro bono work.

To get a taste of pro bono, Lardent also recommends the institute’s Clinic in a Box℠ program: it requires just a four-hour commitment from in-house counsel and offers continuing legal education credit. That makes for a more finite, manageable commitment for even the busiest small department lawyer.

“It really is meaningful help,” Lardent says about the Clinic in a Box℠ program. “We don’t know who’s happier [in the end]: the nonprofit client, or the volunteer lawyer.”

The Corporate Pro Bono Challenge℠ is already taking hold. Lardent says law departments are interested in benchmarking, and many are signing on. Typically, law departments don’t involve just their lawyers in pro bono projects, but also their non-attorney legal staff. Lardent says law departments that have embraced pro bono projects typically announced those programs with a bang — some, like Exelon and Symantec, for example, have used their off-site meetings to offer a clinic on public interest work, in order to give people in the law department a taste of what pro bono work can offer.

Some law departments have even started to send out pro bono RFPs to public interest organizations or law firms, Lardent adds, where general counsel ask firms and agencies to present a proposal for pro bono work done by the law department. Pro bono RFPs not only help the department learn more about different projects that are available and find some that are great fits for in-house counsel, but they also allow the law department to formulate relationships with firms and agencies.

“The other thing we encourage people to look at is what the company is doing as a whole in a philanthropic [endeavor,]” Lardent says. For example, at one company that participated in Habitat for Humanity building projects, Lardent says the law department got involved by offering help with title transfers. At companies that volunteer at homeless shelters or soup kitchens, in-house counsel can go along to give free legal advice. At one Exelon event, for example, employees of the law department, along with staff from Morgan Lewis & Bockius, held a Birth Certificate Clinic and helped homeless clients complete the necessary documentation to apply for birth certificates.

An added benefit to working with the corporate client on public interest work is often better interaction with the client and increased visibility for the law department, Lardent says. When the law departments add pro bono legal service to volunteer work that the company is already engaging in, corporate counsel can also seize the opportunity to develop a better working relationship with the client. So, corporate counsel can benefit from pro bono work while they benefit the greater good.

The Corporate Pro Bono Challenge is just another way corporate counsel are benchmarking when it comes to issues that impact the legal profession.

“It’s amazing to us how quickly this movement is taking off in-house,” says Lardent. “The interest is extraordinary.”