Kim Kerker, Author at Pro Bono Institute

Celebrate Pro Bono Week! Now Keep Up the Momentum Year Round

October 9, 2018

This month, the American Bar Association (ABA) will mark the 10th Annual National Celebration of Pro Bono on October 21 – 27, 2018. The event is not only an occasion to celebrate the efforts of pro bono volunteers but also a week to inspire, educate, and train members of the private bar on the importance of their contribution to closing the justice gap. This year, the ABA’s national celebration has a special focus on disaster resiliency – a particularly salient topic one year after Hurricane Harvey and Hurricane Maria, and one month after Hurricane Florence. This year’s focal point is

Pro Bono and the Death of the Billable Hour

September 27, 2018

How should we treat our pro bono hours? Traditionally, as an incentive and motivator for attorneys to participate in pro bono, the gold standard was for law firms to treat time spent on pro bono matters the same as time spent on billable matters. At firms with billable hour requirements, pro bono matters would count towards reaching hourly goals. However, we have recently seen a trend of firms of moving away from the billable hour as a tool to evaluate performance of attorneys by either minimizing their importance or doing away with billable hours altogether. For firms that are distancing

PBI Applauds Kansas’s New Rule Permitting Registered In-House Counsel to Practice Pro Bono

September 19, 2018

On September 6, 2018, the Kansas Supreme Court lifted the prohibition against non-locally licensed in-house counsel providing pro bono legal services. The amendment to Kansas Supreme Court Rule 712 will permit the approximately 200 registered in-house counsel in Kansas to provide legal aid to low-income individuals and communities. Last year, 10,000 legal aid requests went unfulfilled by Kansas Legal Services due to lack of staff capacity. The new rule will allow more attorneys in the private bar to deliver much needed legal services to the underserved. Pro Bono Institute (PBI) congratulates the many in-house counsel and their partners who advocated

Capital One Invests in Pro Bono for Young Adults’ Financial Health

September 13, 2018

Here at Corporate Pro Bono, we see in-house departments select pro bono projects for many different reasons. Some choose pro bono engagements related to their company’s business priorities. Others choose projects that intersect with their companies’ Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) goals. And some legal departments develop pro bono initiatives that support both the corporate mission and its CSR objectives. Capital One®** developed the Identity Theft Clinic, a signature pro bono project, that not only augments the company’s business of delivering financial products and services to customers, but also supports its Future Edge® initiative that helps people at all stages of

Doing Pro Bono to Preserve Democracy

September 6, 2018

With the 2018 midterm elections around the corner, an added spotlight is placed on ensuring the right to vote in jurisdictions across the United States, and pro bono lawyers have played a unique role in protecting the right to vote for individuals and marginalized communities. In the last seven years, dozens of states have adopted a range of laws that impact voting. In 2017, legislatures in Arkansas, Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Montana, and North Dakota passed laws that impose voter ID requirements, purge voters, and limit voter registration drives. Opponents of these regulations argue that they have a disproportionate impact on

When Skills Meet Needs

August 17, 2018

A recent Stanford University-led study found that a majority of adults over the age of 50 highly value “prosocial” behaviors, actions that are positive, caring, helpful and of benefit to others. The study also found that one third of older adults exhibit a need for a purpose that is beyond themselves. This one-third equates to more than 34 million people who dedicate their time to addressing the needs of others and making the world a better place. As a benefit, those who engage in prosocial behaviors reported a more positive outlook on life and positive effects on health. Like the Stanford’s study,

The Numbers Are In!

August 16, 2018

The Law Firm Pro Bono Project recently published its Report on the Law Firm Pro Bono Challenge® which found that 129 firms collectively demonstrated increased totals in pro bono hours, average hours per attorney, average pro bono percentage, and attorney participation rates. In 2017, signatories reported performing 4,988,525 hours or pro bono work, the largest annual amount since the inception of the Challenge Report in 1995. The annual Report examines the pro bono activities of signatories to the Challenge which serves as a unique and inspirational standard for law firms. In a time when threats to the rule of the law, uncertainty,

Freddie Mac Lawyers Step Up to Represent Immigrants

July 31, 2018

Although some in-house lawyers gravitate toward discrete, time-limited pro bono opportunities, there are long-term engagements that in-house counsel have engaged in with great success. Immigration is one area, for instance, in which in-house attorneys have effectively provided longer term pro bono services. Attorneys at Freddie Mac**have been working on immigration cases as part of their pro bono program for three and a half years. Freddie Mac exemplifies a legal department that has successfully sustained its long-term representation of immigrant detainees. With the current climate of heightened interest in immigration issues, and the critical need for lawyers to assist detained families, we

From Clinic in a Box® to Community Center: How GGP Helped the American Indian Center Find a New Home

June 29, 2018

Little did a team of GGP attorneys know when they were assigned to assist the American Indian Center (AIC) at a Clinic in a Box® program that it would lead to a three-year pro bono relationship spanning a variety of corporate matters and culminating in a complex real estate deal to find a new home for AIC’s community center. Corporate Pro Bono asked the attorneys at GGP to share their remarkable experience in representing a pro bono client on a long-term engagement. Their story demonstrates the profound impact pro bono can have for both the client and volunteers. AIC was founded

Salary Wars and Law Firm Pro Bono

June 13, 2018

Here we go again. In early June, Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy*† announcedthat it was increasing starting salaries to $190,000. (Law firms made significant changes to the associate compensation scale in 2007, just prior to the Great Recession, and in 1999, in advance of the dot-com crash.) Predictably, Milbank’s move triggered similar raises with firms announcing matching (or more generous) compensation scales, even raising the salaries for their summer associates who just arrived from law schools. This pattern may continue, as “salary wars” are once again being waged at major law firms across the United States. As of now, decisions about compensation are still

Author: Kim Kerker