Darius Adel '24
Satire Editor
Last week, I had the pleasure of attending “Pro Bono in BigLaw,” a DisOrientation event put on by UVA’s National Lawyers Guild (NLG) chapter. The discussion was headed by Io Jones ’24 and Sabrina Surgil ’24. For anyone who hasn't been to a DisOrientation before, it is basically a group-led discussion on various topics. Usually, there is an article for attendees to read beforehand which provides background information on whatever is being discussed. Doing the reading is by no means necessary to attend the event, and I’ve rarely done more than a cursory skim the day of.
The discussion was based around the often-lauded pro bono work that Big Law firms do. Specifically, the talk centered around the benefits and harms of pro bono work. I had rarely given pro bono work much thought before attending law school. The public service work I did while working a corporate job before law school was largely undocumented, at least at an hourly rate. To me, pro bono work in Big Law was always thought of as a small side benefit, an avenue by which an attorney could pursue work that was interesting or important to them. I personally find corporate law itself interesting, but I can understand why that may not be the case for everyone. In that sense, pro bono serves as an outlet for work that attorneys are passionate about.
The discussion was largely critical of firm pro bono work. One student spoke about how attorneys working on pro bono projects would abandon their cases midway through because they had run out of pro bono hours. Other students spoke of firm attorneys who handled cases which they were poorly prepared for, resulting in staff attorneys having to come in and fix their mistakes. There were other, similar stories discussed during the event, but the general sentiment was that while they were well-meaning, many firm attorneys did more harm than good.
One of the ideas discussed was that pro bono work is possibly an inefficient way of getting proper legal services to the people who need it. Another issue the group talked about was that some firms would invest pro bono hours into one case, only to make millions on the opposite side when it came to their core business. This issue, where both the firm and lawyers play as both liberators and oppressors, is something anyone going into firm work needs to grapple with. It’s true that not every firm is the same, but there are very few resources through which law students can make those educated distinctions.
Apart from Big Law’s part in the pro bono issue, the group discussed the Law School’s role. Students spoke about the Law School’s heavy focus on private practice, to the detriment of public service. I think anyone who comes to this school can easily see the imbalance. One idea that was raised, which I hadn’t previously even thought about, was that supporting public service could possibly pull students away from the Big Law path and hurt UVA Law’s numbers. I’m not sure if this is true, but given that further support of public service at the school would amount to a relatively small investment, it’s hard to justify why it isn’t being done.
UVA Law does funnel students towards firm work. For some of us, that’s why we came here, but for others, their path was less clear at the outset. For students like that, the school’s inertia is something that is really hard to fight against.
It’s a complicated and hard subject to broach. Attorneys who want to do good work are caught between a desire to help the community and the forces of capitalism. The DisOrientation didn’t come to any firm conclusions, but there was a general sense that change needs to be made when it comes to pro bono work. Just like many issues in the law and beyond, there needs to be a united front. Attorneys from different backgrounds should be made to understand these issues without feeling alienated. Many of these problems are caused by the industry itself, and so it is left to practitioners to ultimately make a change in the system for the better.
I always enjoy when NLG puts on these events because even if I don’t know much about the subjects, I come away from the events having learned a lot. This is a hard subject to discuss for a lot of people, but sometimes it’s better to just rip the Band-Aid off, especially when it’s others who are the real ones suffering. Being able to have an open discussion in a focused environment with people I admire and respect is a beautiful thing, and I wish there was more of it at the Law School.
---
dsa7st@virginia.edu