I didn’t want to sidetrack this trainwreck-for-the-ages with an off topic question, but it got me to thinking, “How *do *lawyers find pro bono clients?” Do they show up at the legal equivalent of the Free Clinic once a month? Or does someone show up at their door broke and in trouble and they find it in their hearts to lend a helping hand gratis? Or does Gloria Allred have a referral service for people who simply aren’t newsworthy?
I get it that if there’s a chance to recover damages, it’s always “free.”
It would be a bonus if Rand Rover showed up to enlighten me about the process employed at his firm. Possibly he has already but I’m not wading through 30 plus pages of bile and phlegm to find out. Besides, I’m confident that the SDMB can fight my ignorance in, oh, maybe a page or two tops.
At the ‘big law’ firm where I interned, we went to a local church and listened to peoples’ concerns - offering advice to most and taking cases from others. There were other firms and solo practioners there as well, with the church administering the thing.
I know that we also picked up higher-profile cases by recommendation from the ACLU, the Southern Poverty Law Center, the Bar Association, and other groups.
My firm has a relationship with various legal representation organizations - we are on the list of various Circuits as willing to provide pro bono representation for pro se criminal appellees; we work with the Catholic Archdiocese Legal network; we work with various disability rights groups that sometimes leads to references for legal representation. We also do a lot of work with asylum charities.
Much of the time it will be an organization a partner has personal links to. And often those links will develop long term within the firm. After a while, you become sort of a preferred provider to various organizations.
In general what happens is the person in need goes to a charity that applies to their situation, and the charity approaches law firms that it already has a relationship with. It is exceedingly rare a person comes off the street to a BigLaw law firm and receives pro bono representation.
I have a great idea for a patent, but have been told it would cost between $5,000-$15,000 to file a patent application, and don’t have that kind of cash.
Is there a way to get pro bono assistance to determine if the product is patentable (having already done a search myself on the USPTO website) and to have the patent written up? Would a typical law firm do it for a percentage ownership in the patent rights?
My brother was initially paid by his firm to work for a non-profit that mostly handles tenant/landlord disputes. The services were free to anyone that walked in or called. Another part of that was one day a week they’d have a few lawyers hang out at the local court house and offer advice to anyone without a lawyer of their own for their upcoming case.
Once a month I think he still ends up at a court house doing similar. The distribution for his firm is more along the lines of the firm telling their lawyers the must do x for the firm. I suppose anyone could refuse but that isn’t going to help their career there.
My sister in law’s firm takes on charities as clients any work for those charities that needs to be done is pro bono hours. At her firm the pro bono work is more like a list of things to do that anyone can volunteer for. People could easily escape doing any pro bono work. However the firm has promised their charities a number of hours so if no one steps up to the plate the partners will have to do the work themselves to maintain the firms reputation. So my guess is if the partners ended up having to work overtime heads would roll.
In my state, we have a volunteer lawyers program. Lawyers sign up to participate in the program, and agree to accept referrals in their geographic area and in their particular practice area. Clients can apply either directly to the volunteer program, or to one of the legal services offices. The legal services offices have a contract with the volunteer program, where the legal services folks will screen the clients for financial eligibility first, and then by the type of case.
The down side to this system is that the volunteers tend to cherry pick. They only accept the simple, easy, mostly uncontested cases. Last time I talked to the director of that program, she was bitching about taking prison divorces–where one of the parties is incarcerated. A first year law student can handle a prison divorce. You know where the guy is, file your complaint, send the summons to the sheriff of that county, file proof of process, show up in court reasonably sober and wearing a tie, put your client on, ask the obvious questions, introduce a certified copy of the sentencing order into evidence, hand the judge the divorce decree (which you prepared in advance), file in the clerk’s office, hand a copy to client, case closed. Easy-peasy. They generally aren’t willing to tackle the hard cases–wife beaters, baby beaters–nasty emotional stuff.
As an added bonus, sometimes a pro bono client will be someone doing something clearly profit-oriented, but they knew a guy, so they get on the pro bono list at our firm.
This speaks to an issue that I had expected to see come out, although a bit differently. Is there any financial qualification that a pro bono client must meet? Or is the pro bono source (church, social organization) enough of a prerequisite on its own merits?
Clearly, **Rand **is suggesting that this is something of a non-issue. I suppose this kind of makes sense: if a lawyer is willing to give away his time and expertise, he should be allowed to give it away to anyone he chooses. I guess doctors and plumbers are no different—only that there is no societal expectation for them to do so.
Is this pretty much one of the realities of pro bono service?