What is best practice pro bono?

Two weeks ago, Nathan Kennedy, a special counsel at Hall & Wilcox, took on a role he has been working towards during most of his career. Hall & Wilcox appointed the insurance litigator as Director of Pro Bono and Community, which means he now spends half his work week developing a structured pro bono program for the mid-sized firm and its 450 staff.

It’s a role that makes sense for Kennedy, who, until April, was president of Australian Lawyers for Human Rights and who has spent many evenings after work volunteering at Marrickville Legal Centre and taking statements from asylum seekers at the Refugee Advice and Casework Service.

He attended the United Nations in Geneva in 2011 as part of the Child Rights Taskforce, worked with the National Children’s and Youth Law Centre, and, in 2010, was an intern for the International Committee of the Red Cross looking at the guardianship and rights of children in immigration.

“Pro bono work is a way to reach out and give something back to the community,” Kennedy says.

“At Hall & Wilcox a lot of our lawyers want to do pro bono. It’s also a good thing to be doing as we have a lot of government clients that expect firms to be doing pro bono.

“There are development opportunities for staff who do pro bono as it gives a variety and allows you to expand your skillset as a lawyer.”

Kennedy says the firm is working towards achieving 35 hours of pro bono legal work a year per lawyer, as a signatory to the Australian Pro Bono Centre’s National Pro Bono Aspirational Target. Now he is directing the firm’s program, he hopes to implement a structured pro bono program, which is recommended in the Australian Pro Bono Centre’s Australian Pro Bono Best Practice Guide, which was launched in May.

“We do get a lot of requests and you can’t help everyone,” says Kennedy, who studied law at the University of Technology Sydney then a Masters degree in Human Rights at the University of NSW.

“A structured pro bono program allows us to target specific areas and to use our resources better. It allows us to do a better job.”

Sue Hunt is the acting senior policy officer at the Australian Pro Bono Centre, a not-for-profit organisation set up in 2002 to help increase the amount and quality of pro bono being done by solicitors, barristers and firms.

The abbreviated Best Practice Guide includes 10 key elements to help firms develop a structured pro bono practice (below).

The guide took two years to prepare and is the result of extensive consultation with Australian law firms. In October, a new edition of the centre’s flagship publication, the Australian Pro Bono Manual, also will be released.

“Australia has a pro bono culture of which we can be proud,” Chief Executive Officer of the centre John Corker said at the launch.

“The guide aims to catch some of what makes it unique and effective. It should be useful for emerging pro bono practices and we hope it will also generate discussion among the more mature pro bono practices.

“There are still quite differing approaches even among the best performing firms.

“It’s important also to recognise that the pro bono movement is an international movement and we hope that the Australian experience of best practice has something to offer in the international offices of global firms because global practice has, like structured pro bono practice, has become more complex and diverse.”

Hunt describes the target of at least 35 hours per lawyer per year as “an achievable goal” for firms and individuals to work towards.

“Nineteen of the 20 largest law firms in Australia have subscribed to the target and just over half of these firms are exceeding it,” she says.

“A firm that’s in the early stages of developing its pro bono program might not necessarily reach 35 hours per lawyer in its first year,” she says.

“For sole practitioners and lawyers in small firms in particular, pro bono is necessarily less structured, but a number of the elements of the Best Practice Guide will still be relevant.

“Small firms and sole practitioners make a significant contribution to pro bono and there are some outstanding examples of small firms reaching or exceeding the target.

“Many do pro bono as part of their daily practice and many individual lawyers volunteer at community legal centres. They see it as a professional responsibility to help disadvantaged Australians to access justice.”