With the global financial crisis reducing demand across many practice areas, firms have found that they have more time and resources to dedicate to pro bono work. Ralph Grayden reports

From a business perspective, an increase in the proportion of non-fee paying work may not look great on the balance sheet; but on the flip-side, pro bono work can give a long-term lift to staff morale and push younger lawyers to acquire skills they would not normally have until much later in their careers.

New Zealand-based Russell McVeagh is one law firm that has been using pro bono work to boost its lawyers' skill set - particularly among younger lawyers - during the global financial crisis (GFC). "My own view - but I think it is one shared by others - is that the general work we are currently getting is even more complex and more high-end than usual," the firm's pro bono partner, Mike Heron, told ALB. "That means that it requires the more senior people and there is less work flowing down to the very junior level. As a result, some people may not be developing their skills as quickly as they might. So we've been encouraging people to do pro bono work."

And while other leading firms are guarded on the subject of decreased workflow, the situation seems to be that more lawyers have more time for more pro bono work. Committee chair and senior partner Phillip Cornwell at Allens Arthur Robinson says, "the GFC hasn't prompted us to tell staff to do more pro bono work but there has been more capacity for staff to take it on." Clayton Utz's pro bono partner, David Hillard gives a similar impression. "The increased capacity has coincided with the economic crisis and a number of firms have increased their capacity," he says.

The GFC does seem to have increased the pool of lawyers with the capacity to take on pro bono work. "The downturn has helped increase our firm's pro bono capacity," says McCullough Robertson non-profit group head Heather Watson. "We've been able to spread the work across a broader group of lawyers with people more capable of responding, since pro bono work has been part of the reallocation of lawyers from quieter practices to busier areas." This means that law firms are experiencing record participation rates in pro bono programs, with several reporting as much as 80% of junior solicitors engaging in at least some form of non-fee paying work.

The consensus amongst firms is that pro bono work can expose lawyers to essential long-term skills at an earlier stage in their careers than billed work would. "On a professional level, the [pro bono] work is often interesting and quite complex. There are opportunities to gain experience you would not get from working in your regular practice group, which is important as a junior lawyer," says Mitchell Mathas, Deacons partner and national pro bono coordinator.

Blake Dawson's pro bono partner, Anne Cregan, says that pro bono work can help forge better lawyers by helping them truly understand legal issues, and consider how issues are communicated. "It makes them think about law and understand concepts," she says, "because the clients' understanding of the law is often less sophisticated than that of clients solicitors would normally deal with - they have to break down concepts and communicate very well."

Like the overwhelming majority of lawyers who ALB interviewed, Cregan says the advantage of pro bono work is not only the skill set it provides, but also - as a Blake Dawson firm-wide survey discovered - the fact that it leads to greater staff retention. "We had always assumed our pro bono program was an important factor in why people came to the firm," she says. "But when we conducted our internal survey we found that it was much more important as a reason why people stay at the firm."

The closing remark went to Russell McVeagh's Mike Heron. "Lawyers always want to be giving of themselves and their skills and it probably doesn't matter fundamentally to them whether they are making money from it," he says. "It probably matters a lot more to partners." ALB

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