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Building a Better Legal Profession

9/30/2009 8:13:10 PM EST

Pro Bono in Your Interview

By Matthew Schwieger

Posted by BBLP

Approaching pro bono in an on-campus interview with any firm can be a tricky affair. While law firm websites lead you to believe their pro bono programs flow like a mighty stream of justice, this isn’t necessarily the case. Strong pro bono statements and awards demonstrate that a firm cares, but this is only a slice of what you can learn about an individual firm’s pro bono practice without working for them first. A quick survey of big firm websites reveals limited discernable difference between firms when it comes to pro bono. Fortunately there are numerous ways that you can get a more nuanced sense of how pro bono varies across elite law firms as your prepare for your interview.

For starters you can check out the results of the annual NALP survey. When you find your firm in the directory, the “Attorney Hours” section will introduce you to some of the complexities of pro bono hours. A firm giving billable hour credit for pro bono work is a good sign of a serious pro bono practice and pro bono hours being considered equivalent to billable hours in bonus consideration is even better sign. An affirmative answer to any of these questions is proof positive that there is an incentive for a young attorney to take on pro bono work. Also found in the NALP survey is the “Pro Bono Information” section. This will give you a sense whether the pro bono practice at the firm is integrated into the structure of the firm—a pro bono partner or committee is a sign of a robust pro bono practice. Additionally, the Law Firm Pro Bono Challenge© (LFPBC) can act as a simple measure of pro bono commitment at elite law firms. A non-profit group at Georgetown University Law Center, the Pro Bono Institute launched LFPBC to allow law firms with more than 50 attorneys the opportunity to adopt a common set of guidelines and aspirations for pro bono work.

Pro bono rankings from The American Lawyer can put what you’ve learned from both an exploration of a law firm website and that firm’s NALP survey in a broader context. Pro bono compensation policies and shiny websites aside—are associates and partners actually putting in the work of serving the public good? This is where the annual rankings from The American Lawyer are incredibly telling. A firm that makes the “Am Law 200” is also ranked in a separate measure determined by their pro bono commitment. The measure is calculated by the average number of pro bono hours per attorney and the percentage of attorneys with more than 20 hours of pro bono work. The resulting number will give you a hint as to whether pro bono is a firm-wide commitment—from the litigation practice all the way to the capital markets section—or if it’s just a hit with a few attorneys. The former situation indicates a weak pro bono culture at a firm.

After all this internet snooping, what good is it for your interview? In an effort to not appear too pushy (you can be that way once get an offer) try some questions that help give you some hints of how pro bono works in a particular firm. If you ask the same set of questions at each interview, you’ll be able to compare answers and firms. Here are some sample questions:

Does the firm have a pro bono policy?
What is the yearly pro bono expectation for Associates?
What kind of pro bono matters does the firm typically take on?
Do Associates find their pro bono work rewarding?
How does the firm encourage attorneys to take on pro bono work?

Don’t stop with these questions; you might be able to get honest answers about the real pro bono experiences from all the employees who interview you. Comparing answers and experiences of your interviewers can be enhanced by having your NALP and The American Lawyer findings handy.

As you can imagine and probably have heard from friends, professors, and elite firm lawyers themselves, pro bono is rarely a cut and dried affair. For this reason, it’s incredibly important to take on the task of getting to know the pro bono practice where you might begin your career as an attorney and gauge the extent to which a firm is committed to pro bono and encourages its attorneys accordingly.

Updated September 30, 2009 from previous post