Pro Bono Work Research Articles

23rd Gordon Arthur Ransome Oration: Law and Medicine: Professions of Honour, Service and Excellence

Amidst dramatic global change, there is a greater need than ever for principled and committed professionals. The sibling professions of law and medicine, in particular, serve crucial functions in contemporary society. To meet the challenges of the future, members of both professions must appreciate and commit to their shared calling to public service, and ensure that it is not overridden by the profit motive. Three further commitments follow from this: first, to nurture and mentor new entrants to the professions to ensure the continuance of that mission of public service; second, to improve accessibility and affordability through pro bono work and by other means, so that all who need professional assistance can receive it; and, thirdly, to serve with excellence in ethics as well as competence, so as not to betray the trust of the laypersons who rely on professionals to safeguard their interests and welfare. The medical and legal professions have much to learn and gain from working with each other toward those shared goals.

Pro Bono: What's in it for law students? The students' perspective

<p>In England and Wales, there is an increasing need for the provision of pro bono legal services. Law students may be a resource that can help fill the access to justice gap, whilst at university and onwards in their future careers. Whilst some students are intrinsically motivated towards altruistic behaviour, many are not. This article will consider what motivates students to undertake pro bono work whilst at law school.</p><p>The article will explore the range of intrinsic and extrinsic motivating factors for student participation in pro bono programmes and consider how students can be encouraged to engage in such activities. The article will also consider whether exposure to pro bono experience can instil a public service ethos in students.</p>In conclusion, the article will highlight experience as an influential factor in encouraging initial participation in pro bono work but also instilling a willingness to undertake pro bono work in the future.

Improving Access to Justice Through Compulsory Student Work at University Law Clinics

In this paper an analysis is offered of compulsory so-called "live client" clinical legal education as part of the LLB as a means of improving access to justice for the indigent. This study first explores the factors which motivate which the establishment of a year’s compulsory community service during the LLB studies, and making clinical legal education compulsory. The motivation includes inducing law students and graduates to aid in the achievement of access to justice. The research then focuses on what the value of community service is in higher education generally.
 
 In the South African civil justice system many ordinary people cannot afford to use the courts because of the expense involved, or because they are ignorant of their rights. This is particularly the case in civil as opposed to criminal matters, as legal aid is more frequently focused on criminal than on civil matters in this country. This paper will consider the role which senior law students may play in rendering pro bono work as part of clinical legal education in their LLB studies. In this regard particular focus will be made on the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN), the only university offering law studies in greater Durban.
 
 As for pro bono work by students during their LLB, consideration could be given to making clinical legal education a compulsory part of such students' curricula. Possible compulsory community service for law graduates (ie post-LLB) as envisaged in the proposed Legal Practice Bill falls beyond the ambit of this paper.

Recent Developments in the Provision of Pro Bono Legal Services by Attorneys in South Africa

This paper focuses on legal service delivery for the indigent by attorneys in private practice acting pro bono in civil rather than criminal matters. In this regard there have been and continue to be considerable gaps between the proper access to civil justice imperatives of constitutional South Africa and the status quo which has existed from the advent of a democratic South Africa until the present. Law as a vehicle for necessary positive change in the daily lives of South African residents is pertinently considered within the country’s woefully unequal socio-economic climate. This paper considers the role which pro bono work by private attorneys is playing and should play in promoting a more just and equitable society through proper access to justice. It explores the current position in South Africa as well as the position in selected foreign jurisdictions regarding pro bono services by attorneys in private practice in civil matters. Part of the discussion focuses on the question of whether pro bono work should be voluntary or mandatory. The merits of introducing a pro bono obligation are critically analysed by looking at the effect on both legal practitioners as well as those receiving the pro bono services. Having defined pro bono work, the practical need for pro bono work by lawyers in private practice is highlighted due to the dearth of legal aid in civil matters for indigent South Africans. Possible constitutional imperatives for the provision of free legal services in civil matters are highlighted. An important part of the paper is a reflection on some of the pro bono work being conducted by private firms of attorneys. The paper concludes with suggestions on means for establishing a more effective pro bono system in South Africa.

Jess Smith and the Design Firm

Jess Smith, the recently hired director for the magazine division of a small contract publishing company in Manhattan, faces a dilemma when a client wants her company to produce images that go against Smith's personal beliefs. A project she inherited features pictures of a heavy metal band posing with anti-Christian and Satanic/devil worship images. A Christian, Smith finds these images blasphemous and also believes they promote behavior that is both pernicious to society and incongruent with her firm's mission. As the deadline for publishing the project fast approaches, Smith has to decide what to do. Excerpt UVA-E-0354 June 15, 2010 Jess Smith and the Design Firm Jess Smith had been hired recently as art director for the magazine division of a small contract publishing company in Manhattan. A graduate of New York's Pratt Institute, Smith had been working in graphic design for five years, and she saw her new appointment as the breakthrough that she needed to continue following her passion while supporting herself and planning for her future. Furthermore, the company was well known for being socially conscious, often doing pro bono work that supported hospices and homeless shelters around the city. As a practicing Christian who drew deep value from her faith, Smith considered this a big plus. When she took the job, Smith faced a number of orders that her predecessor had only partially completed. She organized and filed the orders according to their deadlines, planning appropriate times to work on each so the transition would be a smooth one for clients. Smith did not examine the content of each project in great depth but instead got right to work on those with impending deadlines. Two months into her job, Smith opened a file for a local music magazine's cover story. The project had been mostly completed and required only some basic formatting; while the deadline was a mere 20 hours away, Smith had no doubt she would finish with time to spare. Upon digging a bit deeper into the project's content, however, Smith realized she had made a serious oversight. The article featured numerous photographs of a heavy metal band posing with desecrated images of Christ and signs that promoted devil worship and torture. After a quick online search, Smith discovered that the band was quite popular in the underground scene and often promoted drug use and violence. . . .

Private Law Firms in the Public Interest: The Organizational and Institutional Determinants of Pro Bono Participation, 1994–2005

Despite longstanding concern that the commercialization of legal practice is antithetical to professionalism, corporate law firms have dramatically increased their pro bono participation over the past few decades. What explains this paradox? This article examines the organizational and institutional determinants of pro bono participation across an elite field of large law firms. I find that pro bono work is only partly rooted in internal organizational dynamics and that the institutional environment appears more important for explaining variation in pro bono participation. These findings indicate that large firms may be more drawn to pro bono work as a social process tied to professional status and legitimacy than to concrete, rational organizational goals. Moreover, these findings point to the importance of the interstitial space that these firms inhabit between the legal profession and corporate market as an especially important factor in facilitating, rather than dampening, pro bono participation.

Pro Bono and Clinical Work in Law Schools: Summary and Analysis

This article describes the results and implications of a survey carried completed in 2014 and looking at the nature and extent of pro bono and clinical work in UK law schools. The survey is one of an ongoing series conducted every 2–3 years on behalf of the influential NGO, LawWorks (The Solicitors Pro Bono Group). The findings of this, the most recent survey, shows clearly that more law schools than ever are engaged in pro bono and clinical initiatives – a trend that has been increasingly evident over the past 15 years. To date over 70% of UK-based law schools have clinics. Not only is it the rule rather than the exception to do so but the numbers and scope of clinics in law schools that participate have grown considerably. These developments were reported to an international conference in 2015 (GAJE, Turkey) and delegates there concluded that such a survey would have global appeal and that work should now be carried out with a view to implementing such an initiative. This would have the potential to encourage the growth of pro bono work and might influence policy beyond law schools amongst government and the legal profession – leading to improved levels of legal education and increased access to justice.

Ethics in Pro Bono Practice

There has been much academic debate about the ethical desirability of the profession to engage in pro bono work. This paper considers the connections between legal work which is performed pro bono publico and the concept of professionalism. It then considers the importance of the establishment of the lawyer-client relationship in a pro bono situation, and various practical realities of operating a pro bono file. The paper argues that the ethical framework within which lawyers operate is equally relevant when legal practitioners are performing work for no fee, and refers to some of the specific duties which can be particularly relevant including the duty to obey instructions and the duty to continue to act. Consideration is also given to the entitlement to costs (in Australia). The paper concludes by suggesting that lawyers have a tendency to look to the “Rules” for answers in relation to ethical dilemmas, but there are no specific rules for pro bono work. There is no definitive list that states what is the right or wrong thing to do. Ethical reasoning can only ever derive from a consideration of what is fair and just in the circumstances, regardless of whether or not the client is paying you.

Pro bono lawyering: personal motives and institutionalised practice

ABSTRACTThis article examines the personal values and private motivations of legal practitioners who engage in the provision of legal services pro bono publico. It analyses the results of a 2014 empirical study of lawyers in Queensland, Australia, who regularly undertake pro bono work. The findings suggest strong moral and professional motivations for engaging in pro bono legal practice, as well as a distinct ‘community of practice’ of large law firms in forming and sharing sophisticated structures and approaches to addressing social justice needs. However, the study also revealed a range of potential drawbacks arising from the dominance of the large law firm sector in this field. In addition, respondents from small firms and sole practitioners indicated the many ways in which they are excluded from the pro bono community. The article draws on US scholarship which urges us to think about the ‘content and impact’ of pro bono work to achieve real outcomes and to address the widening gap in provision of legal assistance created by decreasing government funding. We conclude that a particular sensitivity to the context of practice is needed in our conception of pro bono practice.

Memórias and the Journal Citation Reports

We, as many other journal editors, have been looking at the recent release of the 2014 Journal Citation Reports by Thompson-Reuters. The results for the Memorias do Instituto Oswaldo Cruz have again been gratifying; our two-year impact factor has increased to 1.592 while the Memorias is one of the few Latin American journals with a five-year impact factor above 2.0. The other indices released by Thomson-Reuters have provided even more impressive news for the Memorias. The journal continues not only to be the most highly cited scientific periodical (with 5,899 citations in 2014), but also has the highest Eigenfactor score (0.086) of any Latin American journal. The Eigenfactor is like the impact factor, but gives more weight to citations from highly cited journals and less weight to citations from less cited journals, and self-citations are also omitted from the calculation. However when we compare the Memorias to international journals worldwide the results are not so impressive. Here we have the same struggle as many other journals published in developing countries. That is, how can we attract the best manuscripts from our region, which tend to be sent by their authors to highly cited international journals? Even so the Memorias, in the tropical medicine category is classified within the top ten journals, using ranking by any of the indices mentioned above, while among parasitology journals the Memorias is ranked in the third quartile by impact factor. Tropical medicine and parasitology are the only two categories were Thomson-Reuters classifies the Memorias. Other data from the Journal Citation Reports show the changes in journal publishing. One is the growth of megajournals. There are now over 100 journals that publish 1,000 articles per year. PLoS One, that published more than 30,000 articles last year, heads the list. While many are traditional journals, such as Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and the Journal of Biological Chemistry, there are several newer open access (OA) journals as for instance the Scientific Reports from the Nature Publishing Group, which published nearly 4,000 articles with an impact factor of over 5.0. Another trend has been the rise of OA journals. In several categories, such as public health, tropical medicine and parasitology, the ranking of journals by impact factor is headed by OA journals. New OA journals such as eLife, which is sponsored by major research funders, have received their first impact factors (an impressive score of nearly 10) and flagship journals published by the major OA publishers have seen increases in their impact. Brazil is fortunate to have most of its scientific journals published as OA. This is principally due to the SciELO project, which provides an OA platform for selected Brazilian journals, including the Memorias. Many of the Brazilian journals, including the Memorias, are published under a special model of OA where no fees are charged to authors and readers sometimes referred to as Platinum Open Acess. These journals are funded by a variety of public resources (including institutional and research agency funding). This together with the pro bonowork of their editors and reviewers allows for a form of open public access: authors can contribute to the scientific literature and any member of the public can access this literature without any financial barriers. The scientific publication process is thus funded by the Brazilian taxpayers as a logical complement to their investment in scientific research. With this distinctive form of OA together with improvements in the quality of its contents and better dissemination of the journal we hope that the Memorias will continue to increase its impact in the coming years.

Sink or Swim? Why Canadian Law Firms Should Embrace the Future of Law and How They Can Thrive in Tomorrow's Legal Markets

This article explores the role and impact that Alternative Business Structures (ABS) and technology will have on the future of Canadian law firms. It focuses on alternative models of legal service delivery and innovative processes, such as legal process outsourcing (LPO) and document automation, that are transforming the practice of law today. I predict that these techniques will require Canadian law firms to innovate new legal service delivery models to remain competitive in the future. I also propose that Pro Bono work should serve as the new frontier for legal innovation. For instance, Big Law should adopt a radically different approach to Pro Bono work by treating unmet legal demands as an opportunity to pilot new legal technologies that reduce legal costs and improve access to our justice system. Beyond the business of law, I consider some of the ethical challenges endemic to these changes in the context of a lawyer’s professional responsibility to his or her clients. I advocate for a proactive legal culture where law firms adopt alternative business structures and invest in legal information technologies that identify and improve inefficiencies in the provision of legal services today. Those Canadian firms that embrace legal technologies and ABS processes in their business structures will be well equipped to thrive in tomorrow’s legal market.

Law student attitudes towards pro bono and voluntary work: The experience at Northumbria University

<p>This study considers whether participation in pro bono legal work during a programme of academic study at Northumbria University increases the likelihood of future participation in pro bono activity amongst law students.</p><p>This was a quantitative study in which an online survey, measuring altruistic attitudes, was sent to students enrolled on the M Law Exempting degree programme at Northumbria University. The author analysed the data by comparing the attitudes of those students who had engaged in pro bono activity during the fourth year of the programme against those students who had yet to engage in pro bono activity, being those students in Years 1, 2 and 3 of the programme.</p><p>The data suggests that whilst the students value engagement in pro bono activity, this is principally due to the personal benefits which they gain. In particular, respondents reported improvement in legal skills and enhanced employability as a consequence of participation in pro bono work. The data indicates that there is an increased awareness of social and economic issues whilst engaged in pro bono work but this does not translate into a desire to continue pro bono work after graduation.</p>It was therefore concluded that participation in pro bono work during the course of academic study does not increase the likelihood of future participation in pro bono activity following graduation.

Education Dedication

You have accessThe ASHA LeaderIn the Limelight1 Feb 2015Education DedicationEleanor Silverman devotes her considerable energy to promoting and supporting higher education. Shelley D. Hutchins Shelley D. Hutchins Google Scholar More articles by this author https://doi.org/10.1044/leader.LML.20022015.22 SectionsAbout ToolsAdd to favorites ShareFacebookTwitterLinked In Name: Eleanor Silverman, MA, CCC-SLP Title: Clinical associate professor, Department of Neurology, New York University School of Medicine Contact: [email protected] Eleanor Tobis Silverman lives just blocks from Central Park—a prime location that allows her to walk to the college courses she takes at Fordham University and easily indulge in the nearby arts scene. The mother of two also does pro bono work to help foreign-born professors with effective communication and she reviews papers submitted by students at City College of New York who receive research scholarships. It’d be a busy schedule for anyone, but consider this: Silverman, a “retired” speech-language pathologist, is about to celebrate her 97th birthday. Her lengthy career includes stints as a college professor, clinical researcher, health department consultant, private practitioner and school-based SLP. Oh, and those research scholarships? They’re in her name. Having a packed schedule is nothing new to Silverman. Once her children were in school all day, this daughter of a well-educated European immigrant went back to school to complete the six hours she needed for her master’s in speech-language pathology. In addition to earning her master’s from Brooklyn College in 1953, Silverman ended up also doing all of the coursework for her doctorate, but “I never finished my thesis,” she chuckles. Her father was the reason she went into communication sciences disorders. “One morning before school, when I was about 7,” she shares, “he asked me to go upstairs and get him a tin cup. I searched and searched and couldn’t find a tin cup, so I came downstairs very frustrated, until he explained that he wanted a thin cup.” That minor miscommunication inspired her to become an SLP. Her father’s high regard for education motivated her to a 63-year career in the Great Neck, New York, school system, Hofstra University, Nassau County Department of Health, New York University and The City College of New York. Among her many career highlights, Silverman recounts years at NYU as some of her favorite. She taught in the dentistry and neurology departments for nearly two decades. In addition to her teaching, Silverman worked with her husband—a prosthodontist and and eventual chief of the prosthodontics department of the dentistry school—on developing a cleft palate clinic. She consulted for teams developing dental prostheses, advising them on shape and thickness to help patients correctly articulate. “My husband and I married speech to dentistry,” Silverman says. One of her proudest achievements came after moving into the neurology department, however. “I helped start the school’s first speech and language clinic with audiologist Alice Berkowitz,” Silverman declares. Silverman worked in NYU’s Department of Neurology until her official retirement just a few years ago. During her tenure there she focused on communication issues and recovery treatments for people with traumatic brain injuries. Silverman directed the speech and hearing clinic, conducted clinical research, taught, contributed to professional publications, gave professional and public presentations, and participated on panels—all driven by the “goal of furthering the profession of speech and language pathology.” Educating and mentoring future CSD professionals remains one of Silverman’s most ardent passions. In addition to the City College research grant in her name, she recently received an award from NYU’s Department of Neurology for another scholarship she founded. Her daughters—who both have doctorates—also benefitted from Silverman’s legacy of encouraging lifelong education. “My oldest daughter, Beth Silverman Yam, just called and is on her way to speak to a group of 40 women. She works as the clinical director of an agency [striving to end] domestic violence,” the proud mom says. “Deborah DeZure—my youngest—is an assistant provost at Michigan State University and she runs workshops on how to improve the education of professors.” Of course, Silverman brags about her grandchildren: One teaches advanced-placement English in Seattle and another is studying the Ebola virus at the National Institutes of Health. When asked about personal highlights from her long, distinguished livelihood, Silverman doesn’t discuss her publications, speeches or awards. She remembers the people. “I always found every client I worked with a challenge and all were able to show increments of improvement,” Silverman recalls, adding that “the profession is quite remarkable and I’ve recommended it to many people. It’s been a lovely career.” Author Notes Shelley D. Hutchins is content producer/editor for The ASHA Leader. [email protected] Advertising Disclaimer | Advertise With Us Advertising Disclaimer | Advertise With Us Additional Resources FiguresSourcesRelatedDetails Volume 20Issue 2February 2015 Get Permissions Add to your Mendeley library History Published in print: Feb 1, 2015 Metrics Current downloads: 157 Topicsasha-topicsleader_do_tagasha-article-typesleader-topicsCopyright & Permissions© 2015 American Speech-Language-Hearing AssociationLoading ...

Social Reform Organizations and Subsequent Careers of Participants: A Follow-Up Study of Early Participants in the OEO Legal Services Program

This paper considers the extent to which participation as a salaried professional in a reform oriented organization affects the participant's subsequent career. This issue is studied in the context of one such organization, the OEO sponsored Legal Services Program, which was probably the largest and best known organization oriented to the redistribution of professional services in the late 1960s. Because of the paucity of literature on the consequences of participation in reform organizations, a related literature, that of the consequences of participation in the student movement of the sixties, is drawn upon for insight, yet also critically examined. Comparison of the subsequent careers of 228 lawyers in Legal.Services in 1967 to those of 981 other lawyers who were practicing law in 1967 indicates that participation in the program has an important effect on both the distribution of professional services and the rendering of reform oriented pro bono (free or reduced fee) work. In contrast to previous studies, the explanation offered here differentiates between various components of socialization. In addition, the importance of job market factors is stressed. A further difference from previous work is the consideration, albeit brief, of the effects of variation in experience of the organization.

Models of Clinic and Their Value to Students, Universities and the Community in the post-2012 Fees Era

<p>The number of clinics in existence within higher education institutions has continued to proliferate in recent years. The 2011 LawWorks1 report examining the pro bono work undertaken within Universities in the United Kingdom found that at least 61 per cent of all Law schools now offer pro bono activities to their students,2 with 40 respondents offering clinic. This compares with 53 per cent of respondents offering pro bono activity and 11 respondents offering clinical activities in 2006. This evidence suggests that an increasing number of Law Schools recognise the benefits of clinic to students. However, the arrival of a new era in higher education funding arguably requires some reflection on (and perhaps greater articulation of) those benefits and the priorities of clinic activity overall, in order to ensure that the expectations of the key clinic stakeholders (the hosting institution, student volunteers and participating members of the public) are met. Concerns that the significant reduction in state funding for higher education will impact adversely on institutional resources is well-documented and at an institutional level there is likely to be increased scrutiny of the efficiency of devoting scarce resources to clinic activity in a climate of lower (or potentially lower) income streams and leaner budgets. Similarly, some students are likelyto exhibit a heightened sense of wanting value for money in their expectations of clinical education and may well demand greater input in the design of clinic activity. Against this, there has been a general and significant reduction in funding for the provision of free legal advice and an associated increased demand amongst the general public for quality free legal advice and access to justice. Therefore, for new and established clinicians alike, the post-2012 era provides the opportunity for, if not necessitates, reflection on the expectations and ambitions of the three key clinic stakeholders (the host institution, the student volunteers and the general public) and, particularly, the question of whether they are sufficiently aligned with each other and the priorities of the clinic activity in place. Arguably, the possibility of conflicting priorities for clinic originating from these key stakeholders and methods of resolving them has featured little in the academic commentary. This paper seeks to contribute to such a debate by offering some insights into resolving these tensions. Taking the interests of each stakeholder in turn, this paper discusses methods of maximising the efficiency of administering the clinic and managing student expectations.</p>

State Courts: Enabling Access

In New York, millions of civil litigants each year fight for the necessities of life without the aid of a lawyer because they are unable to afford one. While the state courts strive to provide access to justice for all constituents, this ideal becomes a promise unfulfilled due to the lack of available civil legal services for low-income populations. In this essay, I discuss access to justice in the state courts from the perspective of my role as Chief Judge of the State of New York. I examine the enormity of the unmet need in New York and around the country and discuss the measures I have taken as head of the New York State court system to address the crisis. These efforts have resulted in a substantial increase in state funding for civil legal services, the establishment of the Task Force to Expand Access to Civil Legal Services in New York, annual hearings in each of New York's four Judicial Departments, and the development of programs designed to spur the legal community (including law students) to greater involvement in pro bono work.

Improving Access to Justice Through Compulsory Student Work at University Law Clinics

In this paper an analysis is offered of compulsory so-called live client clinical legal education as part of the LLB as a means of improving access to justice for the indigent. This study first explores the factors which motivate which the establishment of a year’s compulsory community service during the LLB studies, and making clinical legal education compulsory. The motivation includes inducing law students and graduates to aid in the achievement of access to justice. The research then focuses on what the value of community service is in higher education generally. In the South African civil justice system many ordinary people cannot afford to use the courts because of the expense involved, or because they are ignorant of their rights. This is particularly the case in civil as opposed to criminal matters, as legal aid is more frequently focused on criminal than on civil matters in this country. This paper will consider the role which senior law students may play in rendering pro bono work as part of clinical legal education in their LLB studies. In this regard particular focus will be made on the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN), the only university offering law studies in greater Durban. As for pro bono work by students during their LLB, consideration could be given to making clinical legal education a compulsory part of such students' curricula. Possible compulsory community service for law graduates (ie post-LLB) as envisaged in the proposed Legal Practice Bill falls beyond the ambit of this paper.

Is Pro Bono also Pro Lucrum? Doing Well by Letting your Human Capital Do Good

Many professionals derive value from engaging in pro bono work, which is also supported by a large and increasing number of employers. Ongoing shifts in the work values held by young professionals ...

Pro Bono Work and Trust in Expert Fields

Pro Bono Work and Trust in Expert Fields

Pro Bono and Corporate Legal Sector in India

By undertaking a qualitative empirical research on the pro bono practices of the top tier corporate law firms in India, this paper seeks to fill up an important informational vacuum about pro bono culture among the elite law firms of India. The primary issues that this research inquires into are: the kind of pro bono work undertaken by law firms in India; their understanding of the term pro bono; interaction of indigenous elements with global trends with respect to the understanding and practice of pro bono; factors influencing, whether positively or negatively, pro bono culture among Indian corporate law firms; and briefly, linkage between the notions of pro bono, corporate social responsibility (CSR) and public interest.The corporate legal sector in India is growing at a spectacular pace in terms of size, reach, areas of expertise and the revenue generated. Within the last couple of decades, it has emerged as one of the most important constituents of legal profession in India and is also increasingly making its presence felt globally. Due to the recent origins of this development and the paucity of studies relating to it, there is a great deal of curiosity about the functioning of various aspects of corporate legal sector in India. One of such important aspects is the extent and kind of engagement of Indian law firms with pro bono activities. Owing to a wide range of rationales, pro bono work, especially in the U.S. and U.K. has become an important part of the overall corporate law firm culture. It has become, in Scott Cummings’ terms, "institutionalized." The top tier corporate law firms in India, which now share business spheres with a number of international law firms, collaborating or competing with them over business opportunities and human resources, couldn’t be expected to remain immune to the practices and ideologies predominant among their foreign counterparts. Since the institutionalization of pro bono practice is most visible among the law firms in the U.S., this paper makes frequent references to the trends and practices adopted by American law firms. This paper recognizes the importance of the forces of globalization on the culture of the corporate sector generally and on the pro bono practices of the corporate law firms in India particularly. With respect to the latter phenomenon, the effect of globalization of knowledge and practices is particularly manifest in a gradual move towards institutionalization of pro bono as observed among most of the top tier law firms in India, as well as in the recent emergence of matchmaking organizations (both domestic as well as foreign) that seek to connect the legal practitioners with those in need of legal advice, such as social entrepreneurs, public interest non-profit organizations etc. The paper puts forth that the external notion of formal pro bono is not received in vacuum among the law firms of India. Owing to the contextual specificity of Indian public interest law and litigation, predominantly transaction-based nature of work of most top tier law firms in the country, and traditionally embedded beliefs, practices, and cultural values relating to the notion of "doing good," the currently evolving understanding and practice of pro bono is acquiring a distinctive shape in the country.It needs to be clarified in the beginning itself that the use of the term "pro bono" is a fairly recent development in India. The current use and understanding of the term is considerably amorphous and overlaps with other socially driven initiatives like CSR. Beliefs such as "giving back" and "doing good" emerge as the common elements that fundamentally underlie these concepts and impart very broad definitional parameters to them. Unlike the case of the U.S. or the E.U., initiatives like pro bono and CSR are not understood as having clearly distinct meanings and spheres of operation in India. The chapter is divided as follows: Section 2 describes the research methodology used for this study. Section 3 maps out different elements constituting public interest law (PIL) in India, factors influencing its development, and the relationship between pro bono and PIL in the country. Section 4 reports the results of a qualitative study conducted on the engagement of Indian law firms with pro bono activities, primarily falling under the following three broad categories: litigation based, transaction based and non-transaction based. Legal advice on transactional matters is seen to be the most predominant form of pro bono undertaken by Indian law firms, and thus is dealt with in detail. This section also identifies various factors encouraging/discouraging Indian firms from undertaking pro bono work. Section 5 concludes the paper.