Pro bono time took a hit in 2010 as law offices downsized and focused on billable hours, but it could have been much worse. Lawyers from 10 of the highest-grossing law firms based in Missouri reported they logged more than 100,000 hours of free legal aid in 2010, according to Missouri Lawyers Weekly first pro bono survey.
WASHINGTON, June 15 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The pro bono efforts of major law firms held steady in 2009 despite the continued pressures of the economic downturn, according to the Pro Bono Institute's 2009 Law Firm Pro Bono Challenge(R) Report released today. In 2009, 134 of the nation's law firms performed 4,867,820 hours of pro bono work, an increase of nearly 24,000 hours from 2008. The total translates to nearly $2 billion in free legal services, or the equivalent of 3,100 full time lawyers - almost the same as the number of full time salaried legal services attorneys in the U.S.
While attorneys know they have an ethical responsibility to serve the public -- most notably, to help fellow citizens who can't afford a lawyer with critical legal problems -- the reality is that many don't perform their pro bono duty. People have lots of excuses -- and some are justified," said University of Maryland law professor Douglas L. Colbert, who has written extensively about the profession's ethical responsibilities.
Erika Alsid Short has volunteered hundreds of hours in the last six years on a death penalty case that has wound its way through the state and federal courts. So when she interviewed three years ago at newly formed Chason, Rosner, Leary & Marshall LLC in Towson, one of her main questions was whether she would still be able to work on the case. Even though they were just starting and had all of the complications and worries that come with that, from the get-go it was, 'Of course. That's not even a question,'" Short recalled this month. "I think that demonstrates for a brand-new firm, but also for the attorneys working here, what everyone's committed to.
Lawyers often save clients' necks, but Elizabeth G. Land, an associate at Nixon Peabody, helped save someone's life a few weeks ago. On October 19, she and attorney David Feldman scored by helping a woman from Tibet win the right to remain in the U.S. Rather than being deported to Tibet where, she believed, her life was in danger, the woman was released from a detention center. Land was ecstatic over the victory, but Nixon Peabody won't get a penny, since the firm took the case pro bono.
WASHINGTON, June 10 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Children's Law Center today announced that one of its pro bono attorneys who has worked on site at CLC for nearly five years has been honored with the 2010 Pro Bono Lawyer Award by the DC Bar. Nancy Hendry, former general counsel of the Peace Corps and prior to that, vice president and deputy general counsel at the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), volunteered more than 1,700 hours of service in 2009 to Children's Law Center to improve the lives of low- income and at-risk children in the District.
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