Partner-led pro bono programme supports those in need
By Darise Ogden
BELL GULLY’S commitment to helping those in need has seen it develop a formal, partner-led, pro bono programme that has it targeting a $1 million spend within three years. In addition to formalising its relationship with a number of worthy charities, the firm has also forged valuable relationships with three community law centres, at a time when the centres were facing what could have been one of the most destabilising years of their existence.
A catalyst for change
For a number of years, litigation partner Ralph Simpson had been wondering if there wasn’t more that Bell Gully could be doing in terms of either pro bono work or “coordinated financial giving”. The firm had always done a bit of “adhocery” on the pro bono side – “we’ve acted for the Salvation Army, Parents Inc, and the Breast Cancer Foundation for quite some time” – but it was pretty random. “We had no structure about who got the work for free, who got a discount, and no real intent to spread it through the firm and create opportunities for people to do that sort of work,” he said.
All that changed following a lunch Simpson had with some very enthusiastic Freehills partners in Sydney, who became quite animated when talking about their pro bono initiative. Impressed by their organised efforts and formalised programme, Simpson returned to New Zealand and “hijacked” the firm’s pro bono initiative, providing the partnership with a paper that said, “Australia is way ahead of us, England’s on the catch-up, the US has been ahead of us for decades; it’s time we were getting something more formal”.
For many firms, especially in Australia where certain tenders are dependent on a firm providing evidence that it has an active pro bono programme, there is an upside to introducing a formal pro bono component to the firm. In addition to ensuring tenders are won, it also helps attract the best graduates. While Simpson acknowledged these upsides, he said that for the partnership, these were very much secondary. “The partners were actually really enthusiastic about pro bono for its own sake,” he said. “There was just an overwhelming sense of ‘absolutely, we want to be doing something to help those that need our help, and who are underprivileged, particularly in access to justice issues’.”
Coming at a time when many firms were cutting costs as a result of what would soon be named as a recession, the decision to implement a pro bono programme was especially commendable. “You prefer to do something like this when you’ve got lots of money coming in and everyone’s really busy, because then you feel like it’s going to have an impact on the bottom line,” said Simpson. That being said, Simpson does not believe that pro bono programmes impact the bottom line. “You just do this as an extra,” he said. “You don’t turn work away because you’re doing pro bono, you do both. What it does is it just fills out the space in people’s workloads, and soaks up capacity.”
The pro bono initiative
Bell Gully’s pro bono programme is very much a formal arrangement. They began 2009 with a plan to grow their pro bono spend from $330,000 (fee equivalent) in 2009, to $670,000 in 2010, and stepping up to the million dollar mark in 2011. Having set their budget, the pro bono team – managed by senior associate Rachel Gowing, and comprising three Auckland and two Wellington partners – set to work to figure out how they were going to spend the money; something Simpson said was not easy. “New Zealand’s pro bono need is not as acute as it is in other countries,” he said. “So you do have to go out and hunt for it a bit.”
The firm also wanted to make sure that their commitment was focused and organised. “We want to see developing relationships and know that when we spend 1000 hours of pro bono work, it’s going to the most useful places that it can go, rather than just sort of being diluted and lost along the way, so that it is hard to actually detect [whether] we have actually done any good in the community,” Simpson said.
Forging relationships with the CLCs
A meeting organised by the University of Auckland’s Professor Paul Rishworth in response to the threatened community law centre funding cuts turned out to be fortuitous for three community law centres – Wellington, Grey Lynn, and Waitakere – and Bell Gully. “We had a meeting with them to see what we could do, and Waitakere and Grey Lynn certainly were very enthusiastic about getting us onboard,” said Simpson. “And so we immediately formed relationships with the two heads of those community law centres.”
For the Grey Lynn Neighbourhood Law Office, Bell Gully’s timing was excellent. It had a staff vacancy that it had been struggling to fill. To assist, Bell Gully immediately began slotting people into the centre for up to four days a week for a four-month period. Forging that relationship with Bell Gully really helped the sustainability of the office through that period, said Helen Twentyman, Grey Lynn Neighbourhood Law Office’s head solicitor. The secondees helped provide cover while they were recruiting, and helped out Law Office lawyers who were seriously overloaded. It helped take the edge off, said Twentyman.
Now that the position has been filled, the level of assistance has been adjusted to meet the Law Office’s current needs. “We have one person who goes in every Tuesday for eight weeks, and then it rolls over to another person for eight weeks,” said Gowing. For Twentyman, this ongoing relationship is valuable for both the office and its clients. The Bell Gully lawyers have brought a good perspective to the work, she said. As the secondees have two to three years’ experience, it means they are able to quickly identify situations where clients do and do not have a remedy. And that is important, she said.
In addition to providing the Law Office with secondees and much-needed library resources, Bell Gully has also agreed to take on cases on behalf of the Law Office that Twentyman believes to be sufficiently worthy (ie in the public interest) and that can go the distance.
Twentyman is passionate about ensuring that standards are maintained in the Law Office, which is why she insists on hiring only qualified solicitors. However, with resources stretched, maintaining the training required to help young lawyers progress is never easy. Therefore, in yet another boon for the Law Office, Bell Gully has offered to include the Law Office’s junior solicitors in its own in-house training programme; something Twentyman sees as positive both in terms of the professional growth for her staff and in terms of the collegiality they will gain from meeting regularly with their peers.
But it’s not just the Law Office’s solicitors who have benefited from these regular placements. Simpson and Gowing said that for some Bell Gully solicitors, even just a two-week, intensive placement with the Law Office has led to them returning to the firm re-energised both personally and professionally. “It just changed their whole outlook on practice again,” said Simpson.
For Simpson and Gowing, the pro bono initiative is not about imposing the assistance the firm believes is necessary on those they deem to be in need. Instead, it is about partnering with the various organisations, talking with them about what it is that they need from Bell Gully, and meeting that need. “If you’re going to do it, you’ve got to be useful,” said Gowing. “You’ve got to make a difference.”
For Waitakere Community Law Centre that has meant the firm has provided a secondee for a couple of weeks, as well as taking on some referral work, where the law centre felt it did not have the expertise or the capacity to carry it through to the end. For Wellington Community Law Centre, the need was quite different. Said Gowing, “What they want is for their lawyers to be mentored… Rather than having someone come in there and help them out with their workload, they want [their junior lawyers] to run things past our lawyers.” As such, Gowing has arranged a mentor scheme where, one day a week, members of the firm mentor the community law centre’s junior lawyers.
Simpson and Gowing have also found that partnering with the law centres has provided them with valuable assistance when it comes to determining which cases are worthwhile. The law centres work as a filter, determining who merits this sort of service, and those that are frivolous and vexatious, said Simpson. “The best thing about that relationship is that we’re moving into an area that we’re not familiar with, and we don’t quite know where we’re going, but those community law centres have been a great interface between us and the people in need to work out what you should take on and what you shouldn’t take on, and they exercise real judgement over that.”
Core pro bono clients
Bell Gully has also turned to a number of corporate charities with whom it wants to build strong relationships, offering to move to a full free pro bono service. “We’ve really got behind Parents Inc and the Breast Cancer Foundation in Auckland,” said Simpson. “We want to do more than we’ve done and we want it to be a stronger relationship.”
Going into 2010, the firm is looking to move its pro bono initiative to the next phase – the Bell Gully Foundation. “Our next move is to set aside actual funding to sponsor projects,” said Simpson. The pro bono committee is currently investigating opportunities both domestically and internationally that the firm can get behind. “We’re looking at partnering with an NGO,” he said. “We want it to be a long-term relationship, where we can see something go from this state to a lot better state by investment over the years. People will have a sense of ownership in it.”
As 2009 came to a close, the original budget of $330,000 had been well blown. “We’ve spent in excess of $400,000,” admitted Gowing. However, Simpson said this had not been an issue for the board – it has given its approval for the team to “keep going”.