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Not that long ago, pro bono work was usually a solitary endeavor where one lawyer represented a poor client on a single legal matter.

But the model is changing.

Increasingly, law firms – especially larger ones – are establishing firm-wide pro bono projects and commitments.

According to Esther Larden, president of the Pro Bono Institute at Georgetown University Law School, law firms see multiple benefits from establishing ambitious pro bono programs: creating good public relations, attracting top law school students and providing ways for young lawyers to hone their legal skills.

Evidence suggests law firms are doing more than just talking about pro bono. One measure of the integration of pro bono initiatives into law firm life is the extent to which firms are creating jobs for full-time pro bono directors.

Attorney Amanda D. Smith, who holds the title of pro bono partner-elect at Morgan Lewis in New York, estimates at least 80 firms have full-time pro bono managers.

In 2006, Morgan Lewis chair Francis M. Milone issued a challenge to the firm’s lawyers, asking them each to volunteer 20 hours per year. In 2007, more than 75 percent of the firm’s attorneys met the goal, Smith says.

Smith describes her job as focusing on project development. She spends much of her time talking with organizations to evaluate their needs and how the firm might help.

She says most of the firm’s pro bono work is in five areas: public benefits; children and families; civil liberties; immigration and asylum matters; and non-profit law.

One example of a firm-wide pro bono project is a relationship Morgan Lewis has established with the National Veterans Legal Services Program, a non-profit organization that assists veterans in getting benefits they’ve earned through military service. About 50 Morgan Lewis lawyers have signed up to provide legal assistance to veterans through the program.

Lardent, of the Pro Bono Institute, says pro bono work has become increasingly varied:
“There are more transactional kinds of things now – like lawyers using their skills to help non-profits and startups.”

In part because many firms have developed overseas offices, Lardent says pro bono work has increasingly gone international as well – often involving human rights work.

In the U.S., she says immigration law has continued to grow as a pro bono area of interest.
Another development in legal pro bono is the clinic model, in which lawyers and law firms “embed” lawyers in health centers or other kinds of agencies.

A program at the Boston Medical Center called the Medical-Legal Partnership for Children has relied on volunteer lawyers to assist clients with legal needs on the assumption that unmet legal needs constitute a public health risk to children. Backed by $2.7 million in grants, the BMC program went national in 2006, seeking to match law firms with health centers.

Another new use of the clinic approach to pro bono legal service was recently unveiled by a Los Angeles law firm and social services agency that joined forces to assist Holocaust survivors.

In fall 2007, the German government announced it would distribute “ghetto work” reparations to an estimated 60,000 Holocaust survivors around the globe. Bet Tzedek, a public-interest law firm well-known for its work in providing free legal help to Holocaust survivors seeking reparations and benefits from the German government, took on the task for the Los Angeles area, relying on an existing network of pro bono lawyers to help.

By the end of 2007, Bet Tzedek was receiving calls for legal help from agencies in other parts of the country. Perceiving the need for a unified national response, Bet Tzedek turned to Manatt, Phelps & Phillips, a Los Angeles law firm.

Stanley H. Levy, a senior partner at Manatt Phelps, was one of the founders of Bet Tzedek 35 years ago, and the call came to him. Would he be interested in heading up a national pro bono program to ensure German ghetto survivors received the money they deserved?
Levy didn’t hesitate. He took the job.

The network presently exists in family service clinics in 30 cities. Eighty law firms and hundreds of lawyers have provided legal services to elderly survivors or have committed to do so.

Levy says establishing the clinic network has consumed all of his time.

But he also says the satisfaction he’s derived from the experience can’t be matched.

“I know that the attorneys who have worked on these cases have been blown away,” he says. “It’s one thing to read about history, but to actually meet someone who has lived through it is something else altogether.”

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