Making a commitment.

• Author: Hanlon, Stephen F.
• Position: Pro bono legal services of Florida law firm of Holland & Knight

The partner in charge of Holland & Knight's Community Services Team explains how expecting each of the firm's lawyers to perform 50 hours of pro bono service is good for the lawyers, their communities, and the firm

Our commitment to pro bono work at Holland & Knight began--as is true of most things at Holland & Knight--with the efforts of former ABA President Chesterfield Smith to motivate the profession and our firm to fulfill our historic obligation, originally articulated in what we used to call the canons of ethics, to provide free legal services to those who needed them and could not afford them.

In 1989 our managing partner, Bill McBride, building on that great tradition, made the decision to institutionalize and structure our firm's pro bono commitment. First, we created a firm-wide Community Services Team with a substantial annual budget to do major pro bono cases. Next, the firm's Directors Committee adopted a formal written pro bono policy for the firm.

Our firm's pro bono policy provides that the firm expects to contribute annually an amount of time equal to approximately three percent of the firm's billable hours to pro bono work. This expectation translates into an average of approximately 50 hours per year per lawyer. Stated in terms of the time value of that work, the contribution for this 800-lawyer firm now amounts to approximately $6.5 million annually.

The firm expects that a majority of both partners and associates will personally participate annually in pro bono work--and they do. Because every lawyer in the firm who does pro bono work does it pursuant to this formal pro bono policy, all approved pro bono work is considered in evaluation, advancement, and compensation decisions within the firm.

The Community Services Team is staffed by myself as the partner in charge of that team, along with a full-time lawyer who rotates through the Community Services Team on a multi-year basis. The Community Services Team has allocated to it a substantial fund for advancing the costs that are necessarily associated with major litigation and major pro bono projects.

There is a pro bono partner in each of the firm's 17 offices. Each pro bono partner, in addition to his or her regular caseload, is in charge of the approval process, budgeting, and ease management for the pro bono work in that office. The pro bono partners encourage a wide variety of pro bono work indigenous to each of our 17 offices, and ensure that pro bono work is, to the extent practicable, evenly distributed throughout the office and consistent with the firm's expectations with respect to both its...