Legal bodies must do more to promote 'unsung' lawyers

At a Law Society event to kick off national pro bono week, regulators and free advice advocates alike came together to call for greater awareness of the vital voluntary work lawyers do.

Sir Michael Pitt, chairman of the Legal Services Board (LSB), claimed that 'no other profession does quite as much' as lawyers in giving their time and resources.

A survey released by the Law Society found that solicitors averaged 52 hours of pro bono work last year, with the estimated financial value across all private practice solicitors totalling £592m.

In light of the statistics, what more can be done to educate the Lord Chancellor about the very real contribution already made by the profession?

The chief exec of the Chartered Institute of Legal Executives (CILEx), Mandie Lavin, reasoned that the work of the profession's 'unsung heroes' should be marketed better.

'A lot of the activity on the pro bono front is unsung,' she said. 'There's more that we can do to extract things like case studies, which are real life examples where our lawyers have made a tremendous difference to people's lives.'

'I think we've got more to do,' she added. 'We've kept a lot of it very quiet. When I've seen the profile of some of the cases that have been taken on which otherwise would not have been litigated, it's really very sobering, so I think there's an awful lot more we should be doing to market it.'

Paul Newdick, chair of Law Works, commented: 'Law is managed and pro bono isn't a great thing for law management, whether in-house or in professional practice. It gets in the way of fees and profit and all of those things so therefore getting something that encourages management to get behind pro bono would be a valuable thing.'

Newdick also suggested that a reporting requirement could be a way of encouraging firms to showcase pro bono as a positive activity.

However, the Solicitors Regulation Authority chief, Paul Philip, was not in favour of 'mandatory requirements for more information that aren't required for regulatory purposes'. He did recognise the benefits of recording information going forward.

'The Law Society does quite well in this space and I could see the benefits of doing research projects to say what solicitors do that they don't get paid for. I can see the utility of capturing that in a way that would provide ammunition to point in the direction you want.'

Meanwhile, the president of the Law Society, Jonathan Smithers, acknowledged the challenge of reporting the voluntary work undertaken by the profession.

'One of the huge issues is the next group of firms, many of whom will have been doing legal aid work, and are right at the coal face of where pro bono work is often required for the poorest in the community who now can't get access to legal advice or representation,' he said.

'The challenge for us is to get them to tell us what they are doing in a recordable manner,' he continued. 'It's something which I think would be helpful if the SRA would help us with but getting them to do that is tough. Incorporation between the two of us would help.'

On a final note, Smithers argued that the strict interpretation of pro bono was preventing solicitors from gaining recognition.

'Many firms think of it on a spectrum, not as pro bono over one side and corporate social responsibility on another, but all part of the work they do in their community. Trying to divide that up and record it in a different way - some lateral thinking might be helpful.'

With national pro bono week drawing to a close, the legal community has had an opportunity to celebrate the impact pro bono work has had.

Clearly a change of tack is necessary to show Michael Gove just how much of a contribution the 'unsung' heroes of the profession actually make to society.

Matthew Rogers is an editorial assistant at Solicitors Journal matthew.rogers@solicitorsjournal.co.uk