From Washington Law & Politics
Pro-Bono work can be as exciting & competitive as making $300 an hour
By Donna Gordon Blankinship
When a law firm puts as much energy into snagging meaningful pro bono work as it does into competing for paying clients, it shows. And the attorneys involved in volunteer work at such firms say it’s as fun and exciting as anything they do for $300 an hour.
Washington state has no shortage of firms committed to community service. Pro bono work is recognized as so important at some local law firms that several have transformed members of their legal staff from money-makers to pro bono coordinators who spend part or all their time drumming up volunteer work for the lawyers on staff.
At Preston Gates & Ellis, Susan Delanty Jones has served as pro bono counsel for the past year, spending half her time doing and promoting pro-bono work and half in her litigation practice. She has been a partner in the firm since 1988 and is proud of PG&E’s long history of commitment to pro bono work., “But it was always hard to focus on it because we were always so busy working on our paying work,” Jones says. “We’ve always done well, but we could do more.”
The more they’ve done this year includes putting pro bono opportunities on the firm intranet, highlighting their success stories to inspire more participation, and doing more internal training to help attorneys work outside their comfort zone. PG&E attorneys can devote 50 hours of billable time every year to pro bono work.
Shankar Narayan was a few months out of law school when he attended a continuing education program sponsored by the King County Bar Association on legal help for the homeless. He was a little surprised to find out that his firm, PG&E, had not been paired with a homeless shelter, as had many other firms in the area, so he went back to the office and got permission to change that.
“Preston has been very, very supportive. Since Day one, I’ve generally gotten the message that, as long as you are able to carry out your normal obligations, you are free to engage in whatever pro bono projects you want to and you’ll be supported in that,” Narayan says, adding that this promise has been fulfilled many times over.
Not only did the management of PG&E give its blessing to set up a monthly legal clinic at Aloha Inn transitional housing, but it is now thinking about institutionalizing the idea, making participation part of every new associate’s training. Narayan says this has gone way beyond his initial idea to do something meaningful to help the homeless.
The young Yale Law School grad, who specializes in technology and intellectual property law, says 30 lawyers in the firm have learned what a great opportunity they have to do good while learning something at the same time. Each month, one associate and one partner work together at the homeless shelter, with the pairs usually made up of attorneys who usually wouldn’t work together. “It’s good cross-fertilization that doesn’t naturally happen by itself,” he says.
Jones’ counterpart at Perkins Coie, Julia Parsons Clarke, is probably one of the few law firm partners across the country who devotes 100 percent of her time to doing pro bono work and encouraging other members of her firm to participate. Clarke, who is also chair of the Seattle Area Pro Bono Coordinators Group, is certainly the only full-time pro bono coordinator in Washington state who is also a partner in her firm.
Like Jones, Clarke’s mission for the past two and a half years has been to search for creative ways to get more lawyers to volunteer their time. “Our internal goal is to get every lawyer to do 50 hours a year. Firm-wide, 73 percent of our lawyers did some pro bono,” Clarke says, adding that within the firm’s Seattle office, on average, the attorneys last year billed over 60 hours of pro bono work.
“Some do pro bono because it sounds fun or because it is an ethical obligation, some do it for training opportunities, some do it for variety and sometimes it provides a nice counterbalance for someone working on a big case,” Clarke says.
Her job has been to help attorneys find appropriate pro bono work and to train those who feel their experience as non-litigators doesn’t lend itself to the kind of volunteer work available.
“I think being a good lawyer is all about having a very broad perspective on life and developing good judgment,” Clarke says. “Every time you stretch yourself and develop your perspective and judgment, you become a better lawyer.”
One of the ways Perkins has been developing its pro bono portfolio and its attorneys has been through a unique fellowship program established in 1987 in honor of the firm’s 75th anniversary. Perkins has sent 25 people on fellowships for up to six months to about 15 nonprofit organizations. Attorneys spend all their fellowship time helping the organization with legal work, while drawing their regular salary from the law firm.
Emily Lieberman has served since September at the Northwest Women’s Law Center as a Perkins fellow, working for the most part in the area of women’s health. The third-year associate, who specializes in labor and employment law, will return to the firm in March with a fresh perspective and some new legal skills.
The UCLA law school grad says she has a passion for pro bono work and volunteered with the Women’s Law Center for a few years before becoming a Perkins fellow. She was attracted to Perkins, in part, because of its commitment to pro bono.
“From a business perspective, Perkins’ pro bono services in general and this program generate a lot of goodwill in the community. People know about it and are impressed,” but more importantly, she is quick to add, “The fellowship program is wonderful for the community because it is such a great example of the reciprocal good that private companies and nonprofit agencies can do when they put their heads together.”
Another Seattle firm that has been creative in its approach to pro bono work is Garvey Schubert Barer. In addition to allowing one of the most generous allotments of billable hours—attorneys and paralegals may devote up to 10 percent of their annual hourly goals to public service—Garvey extends its pro bono program to all its employees. Both staff and attorneys are encouraged to devote up to 30 hours of paid time each year to community service projects, according to the chair of the firm’s public service committee, Lori Salzarulo. In addition to the 10 percent allotment, attorneys may seek approval to devote up to 20 percent of their hourly goals to public service work or be placed for a month in a non-profit beneficiary agency to pursue a special project. In 2003, the firm of 120 attorneys in four offices says it provided pro bono services valued at more than $2 million.
Garvey also honors both attorneys and staff for their volunteer/pro bono work. In 2003, the first time the firm awarded its Dallaire Public Service Award, the recipient was Kathleen Brown, a business paralegal who was chosen over attorneys “doing fantastic work in the community,” according to Salzarulo The award was named for Greg Dallaire, who retired a few years ago as managing director of the firm after a career dedicated to public service.
Salzarulo says Brown, who was surprised and a little embarrassed by all the attention over her volunteer work, was honored for making a huge personal commitment to the domestic violence program of the King County Prosecuting Attorney. Brown did her regular work in four, 10-hour days so she could spend the fifth day as a volunteer in the prosecutor’s office. “She arranged this volunteer work for herself because it was an important part of her life to give back to the community,” Salzarulo says, noting that Brown also commutes more than an hour each way to Seattle. “She’s really making some personal sacrifices.”
Giving back to the community, fulfilling a ethical obligation and learning new skills are three of the reasons cited for doing pro bono work, but there’s another popular motive as well: having fun. When managing partner Peter Buck was involved in founding Buck and Gordon in 1979, fun had to be part of the equation, right along with competency and caring. He says he wanted to work with nice people who were willing to do things a little outside the box.
In addition to more traditional ways of giving back to the community, like pro bono work, the company has expressed its thanks every Thanksgiving since 1994 by conducting a fund-raising campaign for various causes. Each year, Buck & Gordon sends out a Thanksgiving card–a fun one, of course—to all its friends, vendors and clients (about 5,500 cards were mailed in 2003) offering to match every donation made during the firm’s fall campaign. Some years B&G picks one or two charities to receive their bounty, and other years it opens up the floodgates and promises to match any gift to any charity, up to a certain limit.
In 2000, while Buck and Gordon staffers were doing pro bono work and physical labor for Habitat of Humanity of East King County, the company offered to match, dollar-for-dollar, every contribution to Habitat up to $3,000. The campaign raised $95,000 for the project. The donations and recipients vary from year to, but what never wavers is the goodwill generated by this project. And the fun.
“Each time there are new employees and its their first year, they just get a huge charge out of it,” Buck says. “It gives people a lot of fun and a sense of being proud of the firm.”
Buck has a little advice for law firms looking for new ways to give back to the community: “Be creative, involve all the people in the office, take a bit of risk. A lot of people thought we were kind of crazy to start this. You can take a little bit of risk and if you end up giving a little more money than you thought, you’re not, at the end of your life, going to regret that.”