ESTHER LARDENT
Pro Bono Institute
Washington, D.C.
HOWARD WESTWOOD
Covington & Burling
Washington, D.C.
Raising the Bar
Lardent tracked pro bono hours—and encouraged law firms to do more.
WHEN ESTHER LAR-
dent, a longtime
public interest law-
yer, founded the Pro
Bono Institute in
1996 to encourage
law firms to increase
their pro bono ef-
forts, she found
that firms diverged
widely in their com-
mitment to pro bono—and even in how they
defined the term. “Pro bono programs tended to
be very informal and decentralized,” recalls Lar-
dent. “Some were spending 7–8 percent of their
time on [legal work for the needy]. Others were
raising money for a charity, and that was it.”
With their capacity to fund and staff mul-
tiple large-scale pro bono projects, large law
firms were an undertapped resource that Lar-
dent felt could fundamentally change the pro
bono realm. She challenged firms to devote 3–5
percent of their total billable hours to pro bono
activities and came up with a standardized definition of pro bono as free legal representation of
a charitable, nonprofit, or public interest group.
The Pro Bono Institute tracked the hours spent
by big-firm lawyers on pro bono, publicizing
the firms that spent the most time while advising other firms on how to increase their pro
bono efforts.
“Her impact has been unparalleled,” says
Christopher Herrling, pro bono counsel at
Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr. “She,
more than any individual I can think of, has
brought law firm pro bono into the mainstream
and made it so that every major law firm in the
U.S. [has established a] pro bono program supported by firm leadership.” In 1996, Am Law
200 firms tallied 1.6 million hours of pro bono
work. In 2012, it was 4.86 million hours. Meanwhile, Lardent and the institute have expanded
the challenge to include in-house legal departments and global pro bono.
IN 1969 Covington & Burling partner Howard
Westwood went looking for young lawyers
to work at the Neighborhood Legal Services
Program, an organization he had started five
years earlier to provide legal representation
to the poor in Washington, D.C. He found
them close to home, when Covington leaders agreed to send two associates and two
secretaries to work at NLSP on a six-month
rotating basis. Since then, more than 200
Covington lawyers have worked at NLSP,
while other firms have instituted their own
versions of Covington’s groundbreaking
pro bono secondment. According to a 2008
study by Harvard Law School, approximately
50 Am Law 200 firms offer six-month public
interest rotations for associates.
WHEN SULLIVAN & CROMWELL’S Robert
MacCrate headed an American Bar Association task force on law schools and the profession in 1992, what he heard from lawyers
was that law school graduates were woefully underprepared for practice. MacCrate’s
study was a call to action: He convinced
the ABA to require law school to offer more
skills training, such as clinical programs.
“There had been prior reports, but they
weren’t as globally focused or rigorous as
the MacCrate committee [report],” says New
York University Law School professor Randy
Hertz, who served on the task force. “Bob
was the driving force.”
ROBERT MACCRATE
ABA Task Force on
Law Schools and
The Profession
New York
Open-Door Policy
DAVID MORLEY,
Allen & Overy
London
A new internship program at U.K. firms promotes social mobility.
SAURABH DUA (MORLEY)
IN 2011 ALLEN & OVERY
senior partner David
Morley convened a
meeting of senior
partners from several
top U.K. law firms to
propose a novel social
mobility initiative.
Morley—who comes
from a working-class
background, the first
graduate of his state school to attend an elite
university—wanted to address the U.K. legal
profession’s long-running problems with socioeconomic diversity. His idea: 2,500 law firm internships for students from less-privileged backgrounds by 2015. A few months later, with the
support of 23 firms, PRIME was launched.
Member firms commit to providing high
school–age interns with a minimum of 30 hours
of training to develop business and personal
skills. The firms also provide financial assistance
to the students during their internship and maintain contact with them once it ends. According
to the National Foundation of Educational Research, PRIME exceeded its targets by creating
over 750 placements in its first 12 months. About
80 law firms now participate, with the London
offices of several Am Law 100 firms—including
Baker & McKenzie, Mayer Brown, and Reed
Smith—among the new members. The ultimate
goal is to expand the program nationwide.
“Lots of people pay lip service to social mobility, but David is someone who is truly passionate about it,” says James Turner, partnerships
director at educational charity The Sutton Trust
and a member of the PRIME board. “The reason
[that] PRIME has been so successful is that it’s
a fundamentally good idea, but David has been
instrumental in bringing firms to the table.”
IN 1987 Hillary Rodham Clinton, then a partner at Little Rock’s Rose Law Firm, put a spotlight on gender bias at law firms as chair of
the American Bar Association’s first Commission on Women in the Profession. Her report
found that women in firms were often harassed, frozen out of client matters, and constrained by a glass ceiling. “Clinton’s finding
was that it was extremely difficult for women
at all levels to practice law, and the ‘wait and
see attitude’ was not workable,” says ABA
president Laurel Bellows. The ABA pledged
to work to eliminate gender inequality in the
profession and began tracking the number of
women in ABA leadership roles.
HILLARY RODHAM
CLINTON
ABA Commission on
Women in the Profession
Washington, D.C.