"Explains 10 pro bono opportunities that will broaden, deepen and strengthen your paying practice and legal career"--P. [4] of cover.

This book equips the law practitioner to provide pro bono legal service to the populations it features including the prisoner, releasee, homeless, debtor, divorced, foreclosed, disabled, immigrant, veteran, or child. The book is a practical how-to skill builder, like other books in the series of skill builders offered by the American Bar Association's Law Practice Management Section. It provides a comprehensive view of how to assist, compassionately and effectively, a diverse range of pro bono clients facing a host of common legal problems. The book has three parts to assist you toward that end. Part I describes skills, practices, and attitudes that pro bono service emphasize and that serve as practice builders. Part II then has 10 chapters focusing on specific pro bono client populations and the knowledge, skills, and ethics lawyers need to serve those populations. Part III then addresses the needs of those who support pro bono service. Pro bono service offers a unique perspective on the profession. Practitioners can build law practice through pro bono service. Pro bono service can have a business imperative to it, just as it has a social and professional imperative.

What can law firms do to ensure justice for all? How can they serve the needs of those unable to pay? How can law firms improve the quality of life for their lawyers? At a time when government support for legal aid is limited and under fire, when recent U.S. presidents have urged increased volunteerism, when the American Bar Association's Law Firm Pro Bono Challenge is under way, and when some within the legal profession have called for mandatory pro bono work, this new book examines these important questions. The Law Firm and the Public Good blends academic scholarship with real world experience as it brings together lawyers who have wrestled with the pressures of everyday practice. Concerned about deepening the commitment of large law firms to the wider community, the authors seek to provide a blueprint for firms concerned with creating, developing, implementing, and evaluating pro bono programs. Moving beyond the ethical arguments which justify a law firm's commitment to community service, the authors argue that pro bono work is in the firm's self-interest. They show that a heightened concern with the public good can improve a lawyer's spirit, sharpen lawyering skills, and enhance the humanistic traditions of law practice. They conclude that professional responsibility and self-interest support the same conclusion: that the law firm and the public good are inextricably linked and that each can draw strength from the other in ways that nourish both. The contributors are William A. Bradford, Jr., Hogan & Hartson; Senior Circuit Judge Frank M. Coffin, U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit; Anthony F. Earley, Jr., Detroit Edison; Marc Galanter, University of Wisconsin-Madison; Donald W. Hoagland, Davis, Graham & Stubbs; William C. Kelly, Jr., Latham & Watkins; Esther F. Lardent, director of the ABA's Law Firm Pro Bono Project; Edwin L. Noel, Armstrong, Teasdale, Schlafly & Davis; Thomas Palay, University of Wisconsin-Madison; J

The Model Rules of Professional Conduct provides an up-to-date resource for information on legal ethics. Federal, state and local courts in all jurisdictions look to the Rules for guidance in solving lawyer malpractice cases, disciplinary actions, disqualification issues, sanctions questions and much more. In this volume, black-letter Rules of Professional Conduct are followed by numbered Comments that explain each Rule's purpose and provide suggestions for its practical application. The Rules will help you identify proper conduct in a variety of given situations, review those instances where discretionary action is possible, and define the nature of the relationship between you and your clients, colleagues and the courts.

This collection of original essays by leading and emerging scholars in the field examines the history, conditions, organization, and strategies of pro bono lawyering. Private Lawyers and the Public Interest: The Evolving Role of Pro Bono in the Legal Profession traces the rise and impact of the American Bar Association's campaign to hold lawyers accountable for a commitment to public service and to encourage public service within law schools. Combining empirical legal research with reflections by practitioners and theorists about the meaning and practice of pro bono legal work, this collection of essays interrogates the public service ideals that are inscribed within the legal profession and places these ideals within a broader social, economic, ideological, and normative context. Particular attention is paid to the factors that explain why lawyers engage in pro bono work and the ways in which their views of pro bono are mediated by the institutional context of their legal practice. The book also explores the concept of "public" in public service and compares pro bono as a means of delivering legal services with other mechanisms such as state funding. Collectively, these essays investigate the evolving role of pro bono in the legal profession and in law schools, the relationship between pro bono ideals and pro bono in practice, the way that pro bono is shaped by external forces beyond the individual practitioner, and the multi-faceted nature of legal professionalism as expressed through pro bono practice.