This article is the first in a three-part special guest series by Tom Dunn, Clifford Chance’s Pro Bono Director. Clifford Chance is a multinational law firm that has a substantial pro bono practice in multiple jurisdictions – in 2013, 33 of the firm’s offices were recording pro bono time. Since 2008/09, the firm has invested 323,000 hours in pro bono and volunteering work.
Tom Dunn himself has a background in access to justice issues – for ten years he was a housing legal aid lawyer.
This article gives an overview of why the firm does pro bono, how it focuses its pro bono practice, and some case studies of pro bono work done for NGOs and individuals. Tom also briefly discusses his background and why he likes working for Clifford Chance!
Why the firm does pro bono work
A couple of years ago the firm's Management Committee approved our most recent pro bono strategy, and made clear the importance it attaches to the development of the firm's pro bono practice when it said :
"Undertaking pro bono and community outreach work, and discharging our broader corporate responsibility commitments, are integral to our business strategy. They are a part of what the firm is about and a part of the way in which we interact with our clients, our employees and the communities in which we operate".
Fundamentally this is because we believe that it is right for a successful law firm to seek to make a difference to individuals and organisations whose financial circumstances are a barrier to accessing key professional services. We also know that there are real benefits to be derived by the firm from our pro bono work:
- It helps us recruit and retain the best lawyers. Many lawyers are attracted by the pro bono opportunities Clifford Chance offers alongside its fee-paying work.
- It helps develop our younger lawyers. Junior lawyers often have an opportunity to take greater individual responsibility in their pro bono work than in their fee-paying work.
- It helps us to build good relationships with our fee-paying clients. Many of our fee-paying clients are themselves pursuing impressive CR strategies and expecting (and in some cases, demanding) the same of their professional advisers. It’s therefore essential for us to show them how seriously we’re committed to CR generally and pro bono specifically. Often this includes offering them opportunities to collaborate with us on pro bono projects.
How the firm focuses its pro bono work
The firm directs most of its pro bono work at widening access to justice, finance and education. These themes are connected to important expertise and interests within the firm and give some coherence to our work. By focusing in this way we can think more strategically and specifically about what we can achieve through our work and develop particular areas of know how. The firm has a Foundation through which it makes charitable donations and which shares the same themes. This enables us to offer pro bono support alongside many of our charitable donations.
Broadly speaking, we work in two ways: we provide pro bono advice on commercial and organisational matters to NGOs whose work widens access to justice, finance and education, and we advise individuals who otherwise would not be able to afford legal advice. The first category tends to fall within our fee-earning expertise. As far as possible we manage our pro bono NGO relationships in the same way as we do our fee-paying relationships. In particular, we have partners leading these relationships who take on responsibility for managing them. In 2012/13, we increased the number of partners involved in this way by 29%.
The second category usually falls outside of our core expertise and is concerned with areas of social welfare law like debt, welfare benefits and housing. Some examples of this kind of work are set out below.
Advice to NGOs
Teach First
Teach First is a London-based charity that works to reduce educational inequality. A Partner in our Corporate Practice leads our relationship with Teach First, and we regularly provide a range of advice on issues such as IP, employment and structuring issues and on commercial agreements.
National Autistic Society
A Partner in our Litigation Practice leads this relationship, which is focused on the delivery of pro bono advocacy and representation services. We represent parents of autistic children who are appealing to the Special Educational Needs Tribunal about the level of additional education services being provided by local authorities. Since we started this work 12 years ago, we have completed 134 cases with a 92.5% success rate. We are currently also working on a pro bono basis alongside one of our major fee-paying clients to advise NAS on the development of 4 dedicated facilities in mainstream schools in Surrey.
Grameen UK
Grameen UK has been established to develop the delivery of microfinance loans alongside financial education, based on a model developed by Professor Yunus in Bangladesh. A partner in our Capital Markets Practice sits on the board of the Grameen Scotland Foundation and co-ordinates the firm's wider support for the organisation. This has included providing pro bono advice on fundraising documentation, and a donation from the Clifford Chance Foundation in London to provide seed funding to some small and medium sized enterprises in Glasgow.
Advice to individuals
As a firm we have had a long commitment to providing free legal advice, mainly in social welfare law, to local people who cannot afford a lawyer and do not qualify for legal aid. The demand on this type of service has increased significantly following the severe reductions in the scope of the civil legal aid system that were introduced in April this year. Each year around 180 Clifford Chance fee-earners volunteer at 6 weekly advice clinics in London.
We run 18 in-house training sessions each year on social welfare law, and have a social welfare law intranet site. This is a programme where we can collaborate easily with our clients by extending supervision and training to them. Last year over 30 lawyers from our clients volunteered in the clinics. 970 people were advised in the clinics. We donated £144,000 to the clinics to cover their running costs and to help them withstand the drop in their core funds caused by the cuts.
Pro bono secondments are another way that we try and build the free legal advice sector’s capacity. For example, each year we send two trainee solicitors to work in the debt and welfare benefits team of the Mary Ward Legal Centre, one of the country's oldest Law Centres. Last year this helped the centre to advise 342 clients, and the trainees did 3000 hours of casework.
Why I work with Clifford Chance
The work the firm does to support the free advice sector and legal aid practitioners is close to my heart, as I worked as a housing legal aid lawyer for 10 years before I joined Clifford Chance. I was mainly involved in acting for tenants in disputes with their landlords, especially over disrepair and rent arrears where the landlord was frequently seeking eviction; and in public law challenges to local authority decisions on duties owed to homeless people and the allocation of social housing.
Immediately before joining Clifford Chance I ran a 3 year public legal education project on an estate in south London, funded by central government. This involved law students running workshops for the residents about areas of law they themselves identified as being likely to help them manage their lives. I have huge respect for lawyers who continue to work within the legal aid system despite the ever increasing difficulties that the system throws in their way. I am pleased that at Clifford Chance we are doing what we can to support them and, through our work for NGOs, are trying in other ways to provide help to some of the country's most disadvantaged people.
If you’d like to find out more about Clifford Chance’s Corporate Social Responsibility and Pro Bono Work, click here.
PILA runs a professional Pro Bono Referral Scheme that matches NGOs’ legal needs with lawyers. If you’d like to find out more or get involved, please email info@pila.ie
PILA is a project of the Free Legal Advice Centres, which operates 72 Legal Advice Centres throughout Ireland. If you are a lawyer and would like to volunteer your time to one of the Centres, email volunteers@flac.ie.