QuickCounsel
Association of Corporate Counsel
by Corporate Pro Bono
May 14, 2013
“In January 2013, ACC released its Chief Legal Officers 2013 Survey report, which includes responses from more than 1,100 chief legal officers on a variety of topics, including formal in-house pro bono programs. While there are hundreds of legal departments and ACC Chapters whose members are engaged in providing pro bono legal services, 95 percent of the chief legal officers who responded to the survey said that their departments do not have a pro bono program. This Quick Counsel discusses why that figure is so high and provides guidance on how legal departments can address the challenges they may face in providing pro bono legal services.
“For many years, formal pro bono programs were the bailiwick of attorneys in private practice. In-house counsel volunteered on their own, but not until the 1980s and 1990s did legal departments launch formal pro bono programs. Even then, there were not many. In 2000, ACC and the Pro Bono Institute formed Corporate Pro Bono (CPBO) to support and promote pro bono in the in-house community. Since then, interest in in-house pro bono has flourished, and, with CPBO’s assistance, legal departments have found solutions to many of the challenges to in-house pro bono. Now, hundreds of legal departments and many ACC Chapters are engaged in pro bono, with more and more launching formal pro bono programs. With that in mind, it may seem surprising that 95 percent of respondents to ACC’s Chief Legal Officers (CLO) 2013 Survey indicated that their departments do not have formal pro bono programs. Yet, upon closer examination of the reasons those respondents gave, including department size, time and resource limitations, liability and ethical issues, and cultural differences, the results are not so surprising. In fact, the reasons CLOs gave as to why their departments do not have formal programs are why CPBO exists.”