Getting the most out of Pro Bono work

I have set out below some of the top tips that came out of my participation in a Live Q&A on The Guardian website earlier this year. The Q&A followed an article by Liza Ramrayka in which she wrote that tighter budgets are forcing charities and their partners to take a more business-like approach to pro bono. Given the climate of cuts and austerity at the moment it is even more important for charities to develop partnerships with providers of pro bono services. At the same time, those same pro bono providers are also keen to show their fee paying clients that they are responsible corporates and to maximise the impact that their pro bono work has. Now is therefore an excellent time for charities to get the most out of pro bono work.

My experience of pro bono work comes through the international law firm that I work for. We have an ever developing and committed pro bono programme, but we do think carefully before deciding to take on any request for assistance. This is a good thing as it shows that we treat pro bono clients in just the same way as our fee-paying clients. Most large law firms treat the hours a lawyer spends on pro bono in the same way as they treat billable hours and they normally recognise those hours in annual evaluations. We would formalise our relationship with a pro bono client by entering into an engagement letter. It is worth discussing up front with your advisers what your deadlines are and how much time the matter is likely to take. I would recommend contacting professional advisers in advance of when you want your piece of work completed, given that they are all busy people.

Instead of reaching out to a professional adviser as and when a problem arises, charities could also consider having a more formal relationship. The NSPCC has led the way with this by being the first charity in the UK to establish its own legal panel. Meaning that it has a number of law firms that it can turn to for legal advice. This is an example of pro bono relationships becoming much more formalised rather than simply ad hoc. It may be that law firms will go down the route of having one or two major tie ups with their pro bono clients (rather than a series of ad hoc relationships), which means that charities should be thinking now about building relationships with the big firms in case they miss out.

Another major area of change in the pro bono world is the concept of "client teaming". The idea is that a big law firm will team up with in-house lawyers from one of its major corporate clients to do a piece of pro bono work for a charity. The law firm likes it because they get to know their client better, they get to do a worthwhile piece of work with a major client and let everyone know about it. The large corporate client likes it because they satisfy their corporate social responsibility, they help out a worthwhile cause and they deepen their relationship with their lawyers. It goes without saying that the charity likes it because they get the expertise of two legal teams working on their projects.

Despite the economic outlook I think that law firms are doing more pro bono work now. I think there is an increasing awareness amongst charities that there is help out there. Professional advisers like law firms place an increasing importance on Corporate Social Responsibility - and perhaps most crucially their clients demand it of them and expect them to have strong pro bono programmes. Young lawyers are keener than ever to do pro bono work - it is something that I see a lot of in the recruitment process - and that culture will in time work its way to the top.

Charities would be advised to remember that the relationship with a professional adviser is a two-way thing. Meaning that the charity cannot simply expect law firms to give them lots of free advice and not see anything in return. Charities should think about what they can offer to entice the top law firms, banks and accountants to want to give their time to help them free of charge. Charities should remember that advisers always like to know what impact their advice has had, what value it has given. So I would recommend that you follow up with the advisers that helped you and let them know how the matter they helped with has (hopefully) improved things. It is frustrating when you work on a project and then you never hear anything else about it.

So what is the take-away from all this. Basically, that it is worth spending a bit of time developing a good relationship between charity and adviser, as in the long run everyone concerned benefits from it - and none more so than the people that the charities are there to help.