Report on the Fifth National Law Firm Pro Bono Survey Australian firms with fifty or more lawyers March 2017 Australian Pro Bono Centre The Law Building, University of New South Wales UNSW Sydney NSW 2052 Website: probonocentre.org.au Tel: +61 2 9385 7381 Fax +61 2 9385 7375 Email: [email protected] About the AUSTRALIAN PRO BONO CENTRE The Australian Pro Bono Centre is an independent centre of expertise that aims to grow the capacity of the Australian legal profession to provide pro bono legal services that are focused on increasing access to justice for socially disadvantaged and/or marginalised persons, and furthering the public interest. While the Centre does not provide legal advice, its policy and research work supports the provision of free legal services and informs government of the role that it can play to encourage the growth of pro bono legal services. The Centre's work is guided by a board and advisory council that include representatives of community legal organisations, pro bono clearing houses, the private legal profession, universities and government. Established in 2002 as an independent, not-for-profit organisation at the University of New South Wales, it was envisaged that the Centre would: “Stimulate and encourage the development, expansion and co-ordination of pro bono services, as well as offering practical assistance for pro bono service providers (and potential providers). The Centre would play the key roles of facilitating pro bono practice and enabling the collection and exchange of information.” The strategies that the Centre employs to grow pro bono capacity include: Strengthening the place of pro bono legal work within the Australian legal profession as an integral part of legal practice by • being a leading advocate for pro bono legal work; • promoting the pro bono ethos and increasing the visibility of pro bono legal work; • developing policies and advocating for measures to encourage an increase in the quality and amount of pro bono legal work; and • producing resources and sharing information in Australia, regionally and internationally, that builds pro bono culture in the Australian legal profession and participation by Australian lawyers in pro bono legal work. Providing practical assistance to facilitate, and remove barriers to, the provision of pro bono legal services by • undertaking research on how pro bono legal assistance can best respond to unmet legal need, including the identification of best practice in its provision; • engaging in policy development, advocacy and law reform on issues that have an impact on pro bono legal services; • providing practical advice to lawyers and law firms to support their efforts to increase the quantity, quality and impact of their pro bono work; • informing community organisations about the way pro bono operates in Australia; and • leading in the development of new and innovative pro bono project and partnership models. Promoting the pro bono legal work of the Australian legal profession to the general public by • informing members of the public through the media and presentations about the pro bono legal work undertaken by members of the Australian legal profession. The Australian Pro Bono Centre operates with the financial assistance it receives from the Commonwealth and State and Territories Attorney-General Departments, and support from the Faculty of Law at the University of New South Wales. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-commercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Australia licence http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/ 1 Contents About the Australian Pro Bono Centre .................................................................................. 1 Acknowledgments ...............................................................................................................4 Executive Summary .............................................................................................................5 Chapter Highlights ...............................................................................................................8 Methodology ..................................................................................................................... 15 1 Who are we? .............................................................................................................. 16 How many firms in Australia have fifty or more FTE lawyers? ........................................... 16 How many lawyers do we have? ......................................................................................... 17 Where are we located? ....................................................................................................... 17 What if we are an international firm or going through a merger? ..................................... 18 “International law firms” ............................................................................................. 19 Law firm mergers ......................................................................................................... 20 2 How much “pro bono legal work” do we do?............................................................... 21 What is “pro bono legal work”? .......................................................................................... 21 How many pro bono hours per lawyer do we do? .............................................................. 22 Change in individual firms’ reported pro bono hours per lawyer from 2014 to 2016 . 25 Proportion of lawyers individually meeting the Target ............................................... 26 How many hours of pro bono were provided in total? ....................................................... 26 How much of this work was provided “without charge”? ........................................... 28 Pro bono as a percentage of total billable hours ......................................................... 28 How many lawyers participate in pro bono? ...................................................................... 29 Change in individual firms’ participation rate from 2014 to 2016 .............................. 31 Partner participation.................................................................................................... 32 3 What type of pro bono legal work do we do? .............................................................. 33 Who do we help? ................................................................................................................. 33 In what areas of law and practice do we provide the most pro bono assistance? ............. 35 Areas of focus for pro bono programs ......................................................................... 37 In what areas of law and practice did we not assist? .......................................................... 37 Where do we provide pro bono assistance? ....................................................................... 39 Pro bono assistance for clients in RRR areas ............................................................... 39 Pro bono for international clients ................................................................................ 40 2 4 How do we partner with others? ................................................................................ 42 Where do we source our pro bono legal work? .................................................................. 42 New and innovative approaches to pro bono delivery ................................................ 44 Do we work with pro bono referral organisations and schemes? ...................................... 44 How do we offer secondments? ......................................................................................... 46 Number of partner organisations ................................................................................ 46 Quantity of secondments ............................................................................................. 46 Structure of secondments ............................................................................................ 47 Do we partner with in-house lawyers? ............................................................................... 48 5 How do we plan for pro bono? .................................................................................... 50 Which factors are key to the success of our pro bono programs? ..................................... 50 What are the challenges we face? ...................................................................................... 51 Best practice pro bono and areas for improvement .................................................... 51 Do we set internal targets for our pro bono legal work? .................................................... 52 Do we create an operational budget for our pro bono legal program? ............................. 54 How do we manage external disbursements in pro bono matters? ................................... 55 The cost of disbursements ........................................................................................... 56 Disbursement Assistance Schemes .............................................................................. 56 How do we credit lawyers’ pro bono time? ........................................................................ 57 Pro bono time: billable hours vs non-billable hours ..................................................... 57 How else do we recognise our lawyers’ pro bono work? ................................................... 59 How do we evaluate our