The Pro Bono Wire
January 23, 2012

PBI and Corporate Pro Bono (a partnership project of PBI and the Association of Corporate Counsel) will present a number of sessions focused on partnerships at our upcoming Annual Conference, and we are working on a series of monographs on how and when to create partnerships and how to design and maintain successful partnerships, identify effective models, reach out to potential partners, and the like. More and more, our work with law firms and legal departments includes providing assistance in conceptualizing and shaping pro bono partnerships. Why the focus on partnerships? There are several compelling reasons, in these difficult and resource-starved times, partnerships make sense more than ever.

*Partnerships create more resources
When it comes to quality pro bono partnerships, one plus one can equal three or even more. Each segment of the justice community – most notably public interest/legal services organizations, major law firms, and in-house legal departments – brings both great strengths and limitations to these partnerships. Without the capacity to tap the range of strengths, the inherent limitations and concerns of any one of the partners can and does limit its participation and pro bono capacity. The clearest example of the leveraging capacity of partnerships is their ability to encourage and influence the pro bono involvement of corporate legal departments. These departments often lack the substantive knowledge required to handle typical pro bono matters. They may not have the administrative support and infrastructure required to start up and manage a pro bono effort. And, typically newcomers to the pro bono field, they are not conversant with the legal aid landscape, the courts and other forums for pro bono work, and the needs and concerns of low-income clients and communities. These limitations, in the past, have deterred departments from pro bono service despite the interest and willingness of their legal staffs. By gaining access to the substantive expertise and community ties of legal aid programs and the pro bono knowledge and infrastructure of major law firms, legal department time and skills can be used to enhance for pro bono service.

*Partnerships add not only more, but different, resources
One shining example of this is the collaboration among Virginia’s legal services programs, Capital One Financial Corp., and Virginia’s largest law firms to jointly create a pro bono case management system. (More information on that partnership is available in this issue of The Wire here.) Access to law firm and corporate staff with expertise in technology, legal research, document review and preparation for trial, investigations, legislative advocacy, and other skills can make an enormous difference in the efficiency, effectiveness, and impact, not only of the individual pro bono matter in which they are applied, but in improvement in overall matter management and case handling. Another exciting example of thinking outside the envelope when it comes to partnerships that will be featured at our Annual Conference is the application of tools and approaches to excellence commonly used in the law firm and corporate worlds to help public interest organizations function at a higher level.

*Partnerships bring different perspectives to the table
A potential downside of expertise and focus can be limited vision. Partners who bring different experiences and perspectives to the table can and should be encouraged to question the conventional wisdom with respect to public interest and legal services work. The impact of a fresh look on legal strategy and approaches can result in better and more coherent advocacy for disadvantaged clients. And, bringing in new voices and perspectives not only improves the work but often beneficially impacts important decision-makers such as judges and legislators.

*Partnerships promote creativity
Partnerships that are carefully cultivated and sustained can result in even more and better results over time. As the institutional partners come to know each other, their resources, work, and needs better, partnerships offer the promise of expansion and depth beyond their initial focus to more ambitious and meaningful efforts. Despite the fact that we have barely scratched the surface of the potential of partnerships, we have seen a number of examples of partnerships that are evolving beyond their early focus, in areas such as veterans’ benefits and assistance to Holocaust survivors.

*Partnerships engage new and different supporters
Often thought of as arrangements between and among law firms, public interest groups, and/or legal departments, in recent years, partnerships have included a far broader group of stakeholders. We have seen increasing involvement of the courts, medical facilities, social service organizations, universities, think tanks, law schools, and other stakeholders.

One striking example of the extraordinary and often unexpected potential of partnerships and collaborations is PBI’s joint efforts with the Association of Corporate Counsel (ACC) to promote a pro bono culture and increased service at in-house legal departments. In 2000, ACC, which had long encouraged pro bono by in-house lawyers, approached PBI to collaborate — and the results are extraordinary. Certainly, each organization could have helped to promote and strengthen pro bono at legal departments, but the results of our collaboration – the expansion of an institutional commitment to pro bono from a handful of departments to hundreds of legal departments, an explosion of creativity in pro bono models and work, and the incredibly heightened importance and visibility of pro bono in the in-house community – could not have happened without the blending and availability of our respective areas of influence and expertise.

The bottom line is that partnerships work. They require a substantial up-front time investment, a leap of faith, and an openness to new ideas and perspectives. Over time, however, that investment reaps untold returns.