As I was finishing law school, the dean was in the process of implementing a mandatory pro bono program. Under this program, law students are required to give forty hours of service to an approved legal organization or law firm engaged in some kind of public interest or pro bono publico legal work. Students cannot get paid for this work, and they can’t get any academic credit for it beyond the “credit” for completing the mandatory program. The program’s purpose is “to instill in students a commitment to their responsibility as lawyers to give back to the community and promote justice by assisting the underserved and underrepresented.”

I will not be the first person to be skeptical about pro bono. Each month I read in my state bar’s magazine several pages of bolded-name praise recognizing bar members for their selfless service to the public; and I’m reminded every time of Stephen Wexler’s admonition that the lawyer “must realize that what make him a lawyer are accidents of birth and interest, and those accidents have not made him something special; they have only given him the opportunity to help someone else.” Or, as my law school’s dean has put it similarly: “[w]ith all privileges, of course, come obligations.” In a profession where reputation is everything, is it really pro bono to do work in exchange for praise and public recognition?

And surely, if pro bono didn’t build a lawyer’s reputation and glean her a few commendations in the bar journal, pro bono levels would drop. As I’ve learned from talking to many lawyers in Canada who volunteer their time to do public legal education classes, the main idea is to “get your name out there.” This is, as another has put it, pro bono publico relations.

Although the impact of pro bono work is measurable and important, the idea that public service still works out to be a side-project of the legal profession is troubling. I worry that “pro bono” is to lawyers today as “social responsibility” is to modern commerce and industry. Yet, I guess it’s better than nothing, and I suppose I could summarize my thoughts by borrowing some from Ray Anderson, chair of Interface, Inc.:

I ask myself, oftentimes, why so many companies subscribe to corporate social responsibility. I’m not sure it’s because they necessarily want to be responsible, in an ultimate way, but because they want to be identified and seen to be responsible. But who am I to judge? Who am I to judge. It’s better they belong than not belong. It’s better that they make some public profession than the opposite.