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| | “Certain words and phrases are useful for the purpose of releasing pent-up emotions, or putting babies to sleep, or inducing certain emotions and attitudes in a political judicial audience." (Cohen, 812). |
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< | I believe the phrase law firms, trained in the mastery of words and manipulation of phrases, use to allow its worker bay-bees to sleep at night is Pro Bono. During my 2-year experience working at a firm pro bono was both the area of law with which I was most disgusted, and the area of law the firm increasingly touted as its saving grace. Pro bono cases were consistently referenced as the only times when an attorney felt they had done well, yet pro bono work was spoken of as though it were a side dish to the main course of insurance amalgamations and antitrust defense. The below is an exploration of the meaning of pro bono to a law firm, and what it may illuminate about the problems with firms and how to fix it.
What does it mean?
The literal definition of pro bono is for the public good. If law firms classify one area of law as being for the public good, doesn’t this highlight the fact that the rest of the work the firm does is not for the public good? |
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> | I believe the phrase law firms, trained in the mastery of words and manipulation of phrases, use to allow its worker babies to sleep at night is Pro Bono. During my 2-year experience working at a firm pro bono was both the area of law with which I was most disgusted, and the area of law the firm increasingly touted as its saving grace. Pro bono cases were consistently referenced as the only time an attorney felt they had done well, yet pro bono work was spoken of as though it were a side dish to the main course of insurance amalgamations and antitrust defense. The below is an exploration of the meaning of pro bono to a law firm, and what it may illuminate about a problem within the firm structure and how to fix it. |
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What does it mean??
“All concepts that cannot be defined in terms of the elements of actual experience are meaningless." (Cohen, 826). |
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< | The only elements through which firms attempt to define the pro bono experience are hours. Law firms institute pro bono hour requirements. They award prizes (coffee mugs, blankets, and handbags emblazoned with the firm name) that increase in worth according to the amount of hours completed. Some firms use the number of hours spent on pro bono projects in their calculus of who makes partner. Still others allow their attorneys to “credit” the time spent on pro bono projects towards the required number of billable hours. Deeming pro bono work "credits" is the most disgusting display of the devaluation of the potential benefit of pro bono. By re-naming hours spent on pro bono cases “credits,” firms imply real work was not done. But wasn’t this work done for the public good? Why is this not real? What could be more real than saving a man’s life by stopping the state from murdering him (ironically in it’s attempt to instill how wrong it was for him to commit murder)? |
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> | The only elements through which firms attempt to define the pro bono experience are hours. Firms institute pro bono hour requirements. They award prizes (coffee mugs, blankets, and handbags emblazoned with the firm name) that increase in worth according to the amount of hours completed. Some firms use the number of hours spent on pro bono projects in their calculus of who makes partner. Still others allow attorneys to “credit” time spent on pro bono projects towards the required number of billable hours. By re-naming hours spent on pro bono cases “credits,” firms imply real work was not done. Firms attempt to define pro bono not by its elements – the people helped, the emotions felt – but instead by reductive, numerical processes that serve to devalue the potential benefit of pro bono. |
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< | The disgusting display of the Sullivan & Cromwell associates who handled just such a pro bono case in Maples v. Thomas is an example of how the attorneys working pro bono cases really don’t give a shit. One would think (or at least hope) that there would be no more important case than one in which the outcome at stake is a human life. Not so for these associates who left the firm (and were rewarded with more prestigious positions at another firm) without turning over responsibility for this death-row inmate’s case. I doubt the associates forgot to turn over the cases they handled in which millions of dollars were at stake. That would have been unethical. The callous indifference towards human life exhibited by these attorneys exemplifies the dissociation bred via firms’ quantification of pro bono hours, between what the law does for the public, and what the law does for the firm. |
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> | Reducing pro bono to billable hours robs attorneys of the full emotional benefit of doing work for the public good, thus ensuring they will not jump ship to board a non-profit lifeboat. It feels good to help a fellow human in need. This emotion could be a stand-alone reward for pro bono but instead firms turn the hours spent achieving this goal into billable quantities. This allows firms to keep public count of their mitzvahs while taking the attorney’s attention away from the emotional impact of their work and the human helped. Attorneys unconsciously devalue the emotional good felt from helping others. However this causes splitting within the attorneys’ unconscious. It does not fully abolish the emotional good, but rather masks it in silly toys and overflowing time-tickets. |
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< | Pro bono work is about the number of hours worked, not the outcome for the people, the public. But this shouldn’t be a surprise. Firms and lawyers consistently quantify their work and turn people into numbers. Measuring performance by numbers perhaps makes sense when working for a corporation, which doesn’t really exist anyway, but in terms of the functionalist approach when helping humans, it does not. It feels so good to help somebody, yet law firms have to turn the hours spent achieving this goal into billable quantities. Why must they create this extra reward? Saying something requires an extra reward makes people devalue the emotional good they feel from helping others. This takes an attorney’s attention away from the emotional impact their pro bono work made on them and the human they helped. Perhaps instead of the parade of hours by which pro bono is currently measured, it would be better, more functional, to compile testimonies from individuals involved in pro bono (the attorneys and clients), the emotions they felt, and the lessons they learned. |
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> | Instead of the parade of hours by which pro bono is currently measured, it would be better, more functional, to define pro bono in terms of the elements of the actual experience of doing the work. Compilations of testimonies from individuals involved in pro bono (attorneys and clients), the emotions they felt, and the lessons they learned. Firms could quantify and display the number of successful cases, so as to satisfy their desire to have public proof of the good done. |
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< | If we are not satisfied by defining the concept of doing work on behalf of the public good with the emotional experience obtained from doing that good, then our work is meaningless. |
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> | Resistance will be met because this would allow attorneys to feel the full power of doing work for the right side. But at a certain point a business can only thrive if it’s employees are happy. Fear that employees will quit because they feel more emotional satisfaction from pro bono is an unpersuasive reason to engender unhappiness and prevent attorneys from feeling the benefit of helping others. A business model built around keeping employee morale low cannot survive. Firm attorneys may get monetary satisfaction from their everyday work, and allowing them an outlet in which they feel emotional satisfaction might actually encourage attorneys who would otherwise leave to stay. |
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< | What does it mean??? |
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> | However this more functional method of tracking pro bono and the reduction in turnover that could result will likely not be a strong enough counter-argument for the economic value in the current process. Reducing pro bono to billable hours satisfies the attorneys’ moral obligation (attached to their license) to give back to society, and does so in an economical way. Partners' time is most valuable. Because associates are concerned with filling pro bono hour requirements and going above and beyond those requirements (it looks good if you're on the partner track) partners are able to pass off their pro bono hour obligations to underling associates who's time is less valuable and who want the pro bono gold stars. Firms fulfill their moral obligations while simultaneously maximizing the money squeezed out of every hour by outsourcing the pro bono work to underling attorneys within the firm. |
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< | Pro Bono is a misnomer. We call it pro bono and claim it’s for the public good. It is not for the good of the people; it is for the reputation of the firm and the mollification of the collective conscious of the attorneys doing the work. By claiming they have a strong pro bono department firms justify the evil of the real work they do. |
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< | We play with words but the joke is on us. To reduce something so human into hours and percentages robs a meaningful experience of the emotional benefit it provides, and thus leaves one feeling hollow and empty inside. Pro Bono work is a band-aide; a mask on a skeleton. It exemplifies the disconnect between what is important (life) and what we are told should be important ($/hours). Perhaps by focusing on the emotions doing pro bono work makes attorneys and their clients feel, this area of law firms can be functional. |
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> | What does it mean??? |
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< | I think, Skyler, that
the route to improvement here lies mostly in the sharpening of arguments
and the anticipation of objections.
Large law firms have been over the last century pyramids that sell
hours. Every lawyer's license carries with it a responsibility to
serve the public, without fee or reward, some portion of the time.
Firms that buy up lawyers' licenses wholesale and sell the lawyers'
resulting hours retail want to put every hour that can be used out at
its highest value. Partners want their obligations to work for free
covered by other peoples' hours. They want their valuable associates
to use all their hours valuably. But they want their statistics to
look better than good enough, and they want people to feel that the
hours contributed to fee-less feels-good practice are recognized, but
not recognized—most of the time—enough for such an hour
ever to seem more valuable than hours producing monetary value for
the partners. (Labor market value, as you notice, in attracting
and—sometimes—retaining non-partner talent is also part
of the calculus). Achieving something like the right level of hours
at something like the right level of cost is a firm-within-a-firm
management problem.
If the lawyers doing the work were managed within the pro-bono
organization, that would be sufficient: the pro-bono firm within the
firm would have a budget, and would practice within the budget, much
as an external non-profit practice like mine works. But then it
wouldn't be providing emotional wonderfulness for everybody else. So
the management of the lawyers remains within the structure of the
hour-selling pyramid scheme, which destroys the effectiveness of the
pro-bono practice it is trying to foster. Rarely is the low-level of
bang for buck visible, however. Unless one has the perspective you
speak from.
These large firm pro-bono operations could also lend out lawyers to
external pro-bono organizations, of course. But that would mean
paying high salaries to workers sitting alongside people earning much
less for the same work under the management that is compelled to
underpay them. And even I would be against allowing the firms to
monetize their pro bono responsibilities by giving their ill-gotten
cash to practices like mine.
So you could approach the question from an economic, moral or
professional perspective and find new things to say that are more
helpful to your case than an anecdote from S&C or rhetorical
thwackings of associates' indifference to the "public radio pledge
drive" quality of some law firm pro bono promotions.
But you should also anticipate some more of the most obvious
objections. Your "what should we do instead?" answers are full of
blue skies and songbirds, but they don't exactly add up to a
platform. Not performing math to prove how virtuous they are will
never appeal to these guys and you know it. If you don't allow them
to keep public count of their mitzvahs, it's always going to be no
deal. And if it's all such a botch then why shouldn't we just
abolish pro bono requirements, and let the stupid virtuous lawyers
who want to give away their time do it after we've sold every last
hour we can wring from them, while we promote to partnership the ones
who never outgrew Ayn Rand? |
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> | Too many times at Skadden I listened to associates speak listlessly of illusions they had of doing good with their license. Too many times throughout this first year of law school have I listened to classmates who came to law school with the intention of helping people instead now say “I’ll work at a firm for a while and do pro bono work…” |
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> | As currently practice pro bono is a misnomer. It is not for the good of the people; it is for the reputation of the firm and the mollification of the collective conscious of the attorneys doing the work. But the mollification doesn’t work. To reduce something so human into hours and percentages robs a meaningful experience of the emotional benefit it provides, and thus leaves one feeling hollow inside. Attorneys split. Firms put the business before the employees in every respect without recognizing that the employees are what make the business. Defining pro bono in terms of its actual elements – the emotions bred from helping those in need has potential to make this area of law firms functional. There is a chance helping attorneys feel happier in at least part of their work will help the firm function better as well. |