Law Office Management
Dec. 2, 2008
Pro Bono Goes Full Time
California firms are joining a national trend a turn pro bono work into a full-time gig.
No longer content to have pro bono work managed part time by the head of a committee, California firms are joining a national trend to turn pro bono into a full-time gig. But they've got catching up to do. For a decade New York and Washington, D.C., firms have been out in front. When full-time pro bono attorney Kathi Pugh (a Morrison & Foerster associate in San Francisco) attended the Law Firm Pro Bono Institute's conference in 1998, for example, the only other attorney she knew of whose sole job was to coordinate a firm's pro bono work was Saralyn Cohen at New York-based Shearman & Sterling. Even Howrey's announcement last year that it was bringing on Charles Song--whose career has been filled with humanitarian causes--to be its West Coast pro bono manager raised the total number of lawyers with similar full-time positions across California to only eight, according to membership figures from the Association of Pro Bono Counsel. (With more than one-sixth of the nation's attorneys, the state might be expected to have 18 such full-timers, given the U.S. total of 105.) However, attitudes are changing, and the state has seen the number of full-time pro bono attorneys double in the past four years. Tania Shah, director of corporate social responsibility at Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman in San Francisco, says, "As large law firms have grown more complex, aspects like pro bono, diversity, community outreach, and sustainability are increasingly being managed by professional staff on top of the involvement of the attorneys engaged in these efforts." "There can be a misconception that pro bono positions fall into the category of off-track," adds Maureen Alger, who became a pro bono manager at Cooley Godward Kronish in Palo Alto in 2003 and made partner four years later. "[But] this is not a lifestyle job. This is the responsibility of running a practice." That message appears to be catching on, as pro bono increasingly becomes both a recruiting and marketing tool. For example, pro bono work figures prominently in the law-firm rankings that Stanford's Law Students Building a Better Legal Profession created last year. And since American Lawyer's "A-List" of firms debuted in 2003, it's made robust pro bono credentials a criterion. In fact, according to Alger, firms lacking full-time pro bono counsel may soon find themselves behind the curve. Like having diversity officers or directors of corporate social responsibility, employing pro bono managers is a way for law firms to reflect modern business practices and streamline administration. "This is not a one-off for us," says Renee Chantler, regional pro bono manager with DLA Piper in East Palo Alto. "This is a fundamental part of our firm." In addition to acting as the point person for all of a firm's pro bono activities, full-time pro bono attorneys are likely to help with recruiting, marketing, attorney development, and request for proposal responses. Some say their workload is so heavy they cannot imagine a commercial lawyer handling pro bono responsibility on a part-time basis. "We wear many hats here," Chantler says. "I love it, but in many ways we have to work harder because we have to juggle so many functions."
Usman Baporia
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