The Law Firm and the Public Good.

• Author: Rhee, Christopher Sclafani

Robert A. Katzman. Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institution, 1995. Pp. xiv, 189. $36.95 (hbk.), $16.95 (pbk.).

I

The legal profession has been a target of public disparagement since well before the New Yorker began publishing cartoons.(1) Recently, however, a spate of commentaries from within the legal community has announced that contemporary practice is distinctly troubled-today's lawyer is a "rascal,"(2) a "lost"(3) member of a "betrayed profession."(4) There are external signals that confidence in the legal process has plummeted. Applications to law schools are declining in number,(5) and the serious consideration that Congress has devoted to tort reform is propelled in part by public illustration with the perceived excesses of legal practice.(6) Today's caricature of a lawyer is unflattering from at least two angles: as a "hired gun" willing to advocate any position to advance client goals;(7) and as an advisor only to the economically privileged.(8)

That the private bar might bolster its failing public image by reaffirming its commitment to public service is hardly a novel insight.(9) This belief nonetheless was the impetus for an extensive study of the role large law firms play in public interest pursuits, undertaken by the Governance Institute, a nascent think tank concerned primarily with federalism issues. "Much time is spent attacking lawyers for the high cost of justice and for the excessive litigiousness in society generally" (p. vii) begins the product of the four-year study, The Law Finn and the Public Good. Such public skepticism about lawyers and their contributions to the common good "provides both a spur and an opportunity for law firms to demonstrate their commitment to ensuring access to the legal system," according to Robert Katzmann, the book's editor and president of the Institute (Katzmann, p. 1). And, arguably, the Institute's response is particularly well timed: As the federal Legal Services Corporation faces the prospect of debilitating budget cuts and potential elimination, more poor Americans may soon bear the brunt of a different "spur," inadequate legal representation.(10) The opportunity for private practitioners to assume a greater pro bono burden is correspondingly great.(11)

II

The seven essays constituting The Law Firm and the Public Good, which otherwise vary widely in topic, tone, and quality, are unified around one common theme: It is in the self-interest of the private bar to promote and pursue pro bono opportunities.(12) Since legal commentators typically rely on more predictable justifications for pro bono work--fulfilling moral responsibilities,(13) upholding the standards of the legal profession(14)--this book stakes out important territory. And it is intended not as propaganda for a skeptical public, but as "a practical primer for large law firms" (Katzmann, p. 15).(15) The book's contributors are "insiders, mostly key partners of large firms living through the trauma of the slide from the high-flying 1980s to the slower and lower l990s, . . . [who are] going back to basics, engaging in fresh thinking about their profession, and combining in all their explorations both idealism and realism" (Coffin, p. 172). While many of the essays offer rationales for pro bono work that are equally compelling for individual attorneys, the authors in a variety of subtle and not-so-subtle ways communicate that theirs is a project to challenge and change firm culture from within, not especially to inspire greater personal commitment.(16) The contributors, boasts Judge Frank M. Coffin in the Afterword, "were not loath to say that [a firm's] paper claims often gilded a frail lily, and that in many firms what passed for a pro bono program were the unsupported, unguided, uncredited, and often maladroit efforts of junior associates" (Coffin, p. 173).

As a "practical primer" on pro bono law, The Law Firm and the Public Good offers some useful information for private firms sympathetic to public interest commitments but strained in their resources. The opening chapter offers historical perspective and statistical analysis about the growth of large law firms and the development of pro bono practice within them (Galanter & Palay, pp. 19-58).(17) Esther Lardent's chapter outlining the present permutations of firm pro bono programs borrows at times the prose of a mailorder catalog, but a new pro bono coordinator is likely to appreciate its exhaustive study (Lardent, pp. 59-89). And William Bradford's Private Enforcement of Public Rights offers an insightful, although not entirely...