Can Lawyers Blog to Fulfill Pro Bono Responsibility?
Hopefully every lawyer knows about Rule 6.1 from the ABA Model Rules of Professional Conduct. You know, the one that starts
Every lawyer has a professional responsibility to provide legal services to those unable to pay. A lawyer should aspire to render at least (50) hours of pro bono publico legal services per year.
Lawyers have a lot of activities that they can choose to fill their 50 hours: direct representation, teaching legal classes, writing brochures or web site content for a legal aid organization, and so on.
However, while listening to Twitter, I came across Adrianos Facchetti, an attorney, who "Love[d] the idea that law blog fulfills pro bono requirement." An intriguing, yet slightly unsettling, idea.
Mr. Facchetti got several responses:
- I don't like that idea. My public interest lawfirm has to turn down 100s every month - maybe more. VOlunteer with legal aid. - sarahjessicaESQ (
- The people who really need the pro bono work would likely not be able to find your blog. No pro bono credit for blogging. - LegalAdmin (9:46 PM Aug 13th)
- I don't think a law blog can rightfully fulfill pro bono requirement--cannot be legal advice (bar regs) or take place of lawyer. - trabernlaw (
- Absolutely does NOT. Pro bono means for the COMMON good, not that of yr law firm or yr ego. - GoonrGrrl (9:53 PM Aug 13th)
- The problem w/ pro bono is that so many legal marketing consultants say establish a blog to drive business. How prove "good"ness? - BeelJDPhD (
But Mr. Facchetti isn't the only person suggesting that blogging might fulfill this responsibility. Enrico Schaefer, an attorney from Michigan, wrote "Does Blogging Help Fulfill Your Pro Bono Obligation?", where he concludes that "blogging is perhaps the easiest and most effective way to reach the most people, providing information and assistance" and that "it performs an invaluable service to the scores of the people who simply need real information about a legal issue they are facing."
So I definitely agree that it's a good thing that attorneys blog about legal issues and provide legal information to clients and potential clients. But is it pro bono service? Is Kelly Phillps Erb doing pro bono work when she blogs about taxes? What about Bob Ambrogi and Carolyn Elefant when they post at Legal Blog Watch? What if an attorney did a guest post at Making Justice Real, Maryland Legal Aid Newsroom, or TRLA Press Center? I'm not sure. What do you think? - K
to make them actually useful/available to a wider audience, maybe states should look into linking to blogs they trust from their lawhelp, etc websites?
As a chief development officer for a large federally funded legal aid program (5th or 6th largest in the US), there may be something here, although not quite as you have presented it. Every state has a web site that is supposed to be sponsored by that state's "Justice Community" which contains pro se and general legal information about a wide variety of generally civil legal topics. These web sites are widely promoted within the legal aid community but not generally beyond that.
Most of these websites have articles written by legal aid lawyers, private attorneys, judges, and law school faculty. There is always a shortage of intelligently written, easy for the non-lawyer to comprehend, information for posting on these web sites. AND, since the law is constantly changing, no article is completely correct for long.
Perhaps Mr. Facchetti would be interested in working with the web site in his state. While most of these things have articles posted, they don't have much in the way of interactivity. Perhaps people could post questions and he could respond - or get one of his colleagues who specializes to respond to particularly technical or specialized legal issues.
The more willing hands out there, the more there will be ideas generated and people helped. One thing I do know - just about zero of these sites has any kind of interactive component. So he could be at the forefront of a new public service.
I have long thought that the 10-20% of licensed attorneys we in legal aid see as volunteers every year could grow significantly if only we found the right niche for each lawyer to fill comfortably. Maybe this is one of those yet unfilled niches.
Sam & Jessica -
This could be a great way to engage attorneys who don't have the desire, time, or other resources to commit to representing a case. For example, a government attorney who knows a lot about child support or taxes may not be able to represent legal aid clients in these matters, but an article or two written about these topics and posted on a statewide website would be very helpful.
For a list of statewide legal information websites, see http://www.lawhelp.org. - K
If you could somehow hold the blogger responsible for the advice, then maybe...however, you probably can't. So, who is to say that someone isn't going to construe the blog in the wrong direction and then try and blame the attorney / firm. It is too risky and therefore not very helpful. Definately should NOT count. It just sounds like an easy way out.
Experts in specific areas of law related to povertly law, could for example work w/pro bono lawyers to write articles on how to move the law further in specific areas currently developing and train other pro bono lawyers to take the cases. So for example, if a private attorney has ever taken a fugitive felon SSA case pro bono for a legal aid group, that attorney could w/a poverty law expert recognized as such, write a guide to train other attorneys on how to take those cases pro bono. The creation of the material would be helpful, as long as it focuses on areas of law that relate and are helpful to the recognized and veritable legal non profits across the states/nation. This could be done in housing and domestic violence, civil rights, consumer law, education law, etc etc.