The American Lawyer - Sample Issue

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.