Pro Bono Sucks

Spoken like a true cake-eater.
Thank God empathy wasn’t on the LSAT.

Ahhhh!  There’s nothing like a big firm lawyers whining about doing some work to help others rather than themselves.  While I understand the self-centered nature of our work, me thinks one should peek their head out of the office once in a while and look at the world around them!  The struggle to make partner, buy a Porsche, and move to a suburb where your eyes will never fall upon those in need of pro bono services may be great, but your needs mean little compared to those struggling to eat, seek protection from an abusive spouse, or receive medical care.
Wake up, stop whining, and realize you’ve got so much while others have so little.

You said:
“No other professionals are strong-armed into doing random work for people who can’t pay out of some outdated sense of noblesse oblige—so why are lawyers?”
He said:
“Pro bono representation is not charity; it is part of the deal that we made when we signed up to be officers of the court and members of the bar.
For example, University of St. Thomas School of Law Professor Neil Hamilton recently penned an article in The Professional Lawyer entitled “Professionalism clearly defined.” In that article Professor Hamilton notes that:
Public service is an important element to all these professionalism definitions.  Each lawyer should devote professional time to serve the public good, particularly by representing pro-bono clients … .”1
And, of course, we have the Rules of Professional Conduct, Rule 6.1 of which carefully explains what we are to do with respect to the representation of the indigent.2
Pure self-interest on the part of the practicing bar dictates that the unmet legal needs of the indigent be addressed.  Doing so is not “charity.” It is part of the social contract, part of the “deal” between the larger society and the profession.
The Social Contract
On the one hand, attorneys are allowed to self-regulate and control the professional aspects of their practices.  On the other hand, the profession agrees to provide all members of society with equal access to the legal system entrusted to us.  To the extent that the profession fails to fulfill the access component of that social contract it invites more regulation by state and federal agencies (think about the accountants for a moment in that regard).
Let me make one further point and I will shut up (for now).
Closely allied to the “it’s charity” argument is the notion that attorneys are being asked to do something that no other profession or group in society has to do and that it is unfair to expect us to do that.
Sorry, I don’t have much sympathy for that argument.  We have service men and women right now (some of them now members of the legal profession) fighting and dying in the armed forces.  That’s something that the rest of us don’t have to do, something that most of will never be asked or agree to do.
But, it’s something they signed up for; it’s part of their deal with society.

Just like satisfying the unmet legal needs of the indigent is part of our social contract with society as attorneys.”
Full article here:  http://www2.mnbar.org/benchandbar/2008/aug08/pres_pg.html

You must work for a crappy firm.  Pro-bono hours almost universally count towards the billable minimum.  Also, one’s chances of making partner at a large firm are so small that it’s better to just assume you won’t and live your (now happy) life accordingly.

you mean they pay me big firm money AND I get to do pro bono – where I can exercise more authority and responsibility than the junior partners on most cases? What’s NOT to like about pro bono?  They call those people overly worried about the hours grinders – and they don’t make partner either.

BFW is right.  The point of the article is that no one at this type of professional level is expected to do pro bono of the nature that lawyers are expected.  Besides, there are only a couple good firms that would credit you with more than 50 hours from pro bono work.  Anyone who has billed more than 2400 hours a year understands what BFW is saying.  The rest of you work for TTT firms, go to a TTT school, or aren’t even lawyers.

BFW doesn’t sound greedy, just dumb. Lots of people donate their time or services to charitable causes. Restaurants donate their food, managers, ibankers etc donate their time by serving on boards, business school students help small business and non-profits write business plans, tax professionals and estate planners do pro-bono work for elderly, pharmaceutical companies donate medicines to developing countries, the list is goes on and on not to mention the billions of dollars these professionals donate to charitable cause.

With all due respect to the pious sentiments that have been expressed here, the question is not whether the legal profession owes some obligation to society but who is going to pay that obligation and how.  Once you hit 150 hours a month every hour after that comes out of YOU, your time with your family, your friends, your possibility of having what anyone else on earth would call a life.  The firm that demands a 250 hour month from you should not at the same time be solemnly intoning your “societal obligations.” You have an obligation to see your wife or husband or lover as well, not to mention your kids (and I mean while they are awake).  The firm pays my payroll withholding tax, another obligation that I owe to society, and one that will result in a much faster ass-kicking from society if it ever stopped.  The firm can hire some flea-bag lawyer at a much cheaper rate than I bill out at to discharge my pro bono obligations and, more importantly, their own.  And if that makes me a cake-eater, bring on the devil’s food, baby.

this is why people hate lawyers.

I will let you off the hook for pro-bono. It is not needed anymore. Thank God Lyndon Johnson, the greatest President in the history of our country, won the war on poverty. It just does not exist anymore. America is free of real poverty. What we have left is relative poverty. Real poverty is wondering where the next meal is coming from. Few people really have this concern.  As solo lawyer, I gave this a whirl years ago. I just could not feel sorry for these folks who had lots of money for smokes and high end clothes but wanted a free lawyer. Banish your guilt and buy yourself another double soy latte!

this is why the practice of law as a private business should be eliminated and all lawyers should be employed by the State. You play your role, you do your job, you advocate zealously for your client, and if you lose, you lose.
Things like pro bono and Legal Aide companies are a joke and don’t do s— to “level the playing feild” between the rich and the poor, because they never get involved in anything that is contested. The only thing they do is take business away from strugling small firms (where the overwhelming majority of lawyers work) that depend on regular wills, gaurdianships and other such jobs coming in.
Needless to say, this would be expensive, at least in the short term. But why are we wasting the tax payer’s money on welfare, soup kitchens and free healthcare for whoever tells the right lie to the right government office? The government should not be handing out these things; the government SHOULD be protecting the innocent and punnishing the evil-doer. There should not be a bill for that.

Pro bono a duty; an obligation to the public; something everyone should do?  This is the kind of thinking that rings my phone off the hook with one person after another wanting services for free.  I do not embrace this entitlement.  The absolute worst attorney to have on the other side is a do-gooder who actually believes s/he is making a difference.  You can do as much of this work as you like.  The absolute scummiest clients you will meet – and those most likely to make a bar complaint – are pro bono.  Walk on the ice at your own risk not mine.

Pro Bono is actually good for your sanity.

I wonder why no one has mentioned one extremely frustrating aspect of pro bono as a big firm lawyer—that the skills we hone in our 2000 or so hours of billable work contribute very little to our competence to perform our 100 or so hours of pro bono work, which is usually in a completely different substantive area and requires managing a completely different kind of client.  I may be a very good junior associate in my own practice area, but when it comes to making an SSI claim or resolving a landlord-tenant dispute, 20 hours of a decent Legal Aid attorney’s time is worth 100 hours of mine.  And the Legal Aid attorney’s hourly rate is considerably lower.  Sure, I may become a better person through the well-rounded perspective on society I gain from pro bono work, but isn’t it better for the clients if we just give a generous chunk of our salaries to Legal Aid?  It’s not an either-or proposition for me as an associate, but in the overall scheme of things, it makes a lot more sense to get big law firms to donate their money than their associates’ hours.

I’m curious: do you work at a firm that does not credit any pro bono hours toward billable, or do they say they credit pro bono hours but look down upon it? Your post was kind of ambiguous on that. If they don’t give any credit, then yeah, they shouldn’t strong-arm you into doing it. I think all firms that claim to care about pro bono ought to allow associates to count at least some pro bono hours toward their billable requirement, because from what I have heard from people who have worked as associates in biglaw, just meeting the billable hours requirement is tough enough, let alone having time for pro bono.