Arnold & Porter, Dechert and Debevoise come out on top in pro bono survey
Arnold & Porter, Dechert and Debevoise & Plimpton have topped a survey of law firms that have recorded the highest number of hours spent on pro bono work.
May 28, 2014 at 10:16 AM
3 minute read
Arnold & Porter, Dechert and Debevoise & Plimpton have topped a survey of law firms that measures the amount of pro bono work carried out by law firms.
Out of the 100 firms that responded to the first annual TrustLaw Index by the Thomson Reuters Foundation, lawyers in England and Wales on average perform 21 hours of pro bono each year.
The firm with the highest average of pro bono hours per fee-earner was Arnold & Porter with 91 hours. Dechert followed with 51 hours and Debevoise was third with 45 hours. Latham & Watkins and Reed Smith reported 37 hours and 31 hours respectively while Simmons & Simmons, Freshfields Bruckhaus Derringer and DLA Piper recorded an average of more than 20 hours.
The survey also measured the percentage of lawyers doing 10 or more hours of pro bono work at their firms, recording an average of 36% across all the respondents. Just over half of fee-earners at Latham met this benchmark while at Ashurst the figure was 39%. At DLA Piper, 31% of its legal workforce achieved this measure.
Nicolas Patrick, international head of pro bono and corporate responsibility at DLA Piper, said: "The TrustLaw Index of pro bono is particularly important for the UK legal market, as this survey represents the first serious attempt to benchmark the pro bono performance of UK law firms.
"The firms that set targets for their pro bono practices outperform those firms that do not. Pro bono work must always be treated the same as billable work. The clients must get the same high standards of service, and the lawyers doing the work should receive billable credit for their pro bono work. Given the time pressures faced by lawyers in large firms, the role of law firm leaders in supporting an institutional commitment to pro bono is absolutely crucial."
The report also found that when pro bono counted as part of lawyers' compensation they undertook on average 40 hours of pro bono work a year compared to a figure of 24 for those whose pro bono work was not taken into account. Outside of the UK, US firms reported an average of 74 hours of pro bono work per lawyer each year while the figure for Australian firms was 45. South African firms reported an average of 33 hours for their lawyers.
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