Starting in the 1970s, the ABA and local bar associations began furiously cranking out position papers on pro bono work and revising relevant codes of professional responsibility to further the bar’s involvement in the advocacy agenda. Once converted to the new view, the legal profession became among its most fervent evangelists…. The nation’s massive culture change during the 1960s brought into currency a radically different philosophy of helping the poor, one that entailed a novel use of the courts.
Heather Mac Donald attempted to start a serious conversation on the subject of pro bono nearly 20 years ago, in a provocative City Journal article entitled “ What Good is Pro Bono?” Mac Donald traced the evolution of “public interest” legal services from colonial times to the present, charging that: The “public,” to be honest, is not the clientele for most pro bono work currently fashionable “victim groups” are.
There is nothing wrong with such progressive activism, so long as it does not masquerade as benefiting the public, particularly when the goal is to raise taxes or prevent the enforcement of-or even to overturn altogether-democratically-enacted laws. However, much of pro bono litigation amounts to advocacy of leftist causes, such as fighting voter ID laws, challenging immigration restrictions, promoting prisoners’ rights and the LGBT agenda, opposing capital punishment, and reforming-via judicial edict-public education, foster care, and other government-run services. Some of the “pro bono” work performed by large law firms and law school clinics undeniably assists non-profit organizations and low-income people with routine legal problems (such as adoptive families, domestic violence victims, and veterans seeking benefits). It is well past time to ask Qui bono? Or, “who benefits?” That may be how the concept began, and what many people assume is still the case, but it has morphed into a much bigger and more amorphous-and controversial-enterprise, largely without notice. Pro bono is shorthand for “ pro bono publico,” a Latin phrase meaning “for the public good.” In common usage, “pro bono” has come to mean any legal work performed without charge, usually for indigents. Yet few topics are as poorly understood and, at the same time, go so thoroughly unexamined. In insular legal culture- law schools, lawyers, law firms, bar associations, the judiciary, and the various industry publications that cater to them-few beliefs are as ingrained and unquestioned as the benefits of pro bono work.
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