In response to brutal legal aid cuts, a group of top law firms are preparing to launch a collaborative pro bono project to help those most vulnerable, as well as to lobby for a properly funded system. Alex Newman reports

National Pro Bono Week, which kicks off on 3 November, provides solicitors with an annual reminder of the potential impact of the legal profession outside of normal fee-earning. This year a group of leading firms will use the week to launch a joint pro bono initiative aimed at helping individuals most affected by cuts to legal aid.

Members of the group, which will also campaign for a properly funded legal aid system, have agreed to direct a proportion of their pro bono work to promoting and supporting access to justice for low-income individuals. The initiative will also focus on replacing one-off clinics with full representation of individuals, and will set up task forces focused on specific areas where access to justice is a major problem, including homelessness and immigration, and create a referral network to share case work.

The group will provisionally be known as the Collaborative Plan for Pro Bono. "It's open to everyone," says Reed Smith's EMEA head of corporate social responsibility, Sarah Morton-Ramwell. "To succeed as much as we hope it will, it has to have critical mass, so the more firms that sign up, the stronger we will be when we deal with regulatory matters or government."

All firms will agree to establish an aspirational annual target of 25 hours of pro bono work for all fee earners based in the UK, publicly publish an anonymised set of results and encourage greater transparency around commitment to pro bono work within the profession.

The members also expect the initiative will help improve the collective impact of the profession's pro bono work by pooling training resources. On the subject of corporate lawyers' ability to counsel individuals on areas outside their normal remit, the firms plan to increase the level of involvement from – and employment of – outside counsel to train their own lawyers.

"There is of course a basic mismatch between the specialisms of our people and these highly technical and rapidly changing areas of unmet legal need," says Freshfields' pro bono head, Paul Yates. "This puts a major limit on what we can do, a point underlined by the recent TrustLaw Index survey, which suggested that the majority of pro bono is not for individuals but for charities and social enterprises."

However, Yates is unequivocal on the need for corporate lawyers to get involved in access to justice work. "The gaps in the England and Wales access to justice system are of course much wider post-LASPO (Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012)," he argues. "Whole areas of civil law have been removed from the scope of legal aid, including much of employment, welfare benefits, debt and immigration."

But the group will be "candid about the limits on what pro bono can achieve in this area", Yates adds. "We cannot allow our pro bono efforts – which cannot in fact plug a meaningful part of the gap – to be used to justify further cuts, or indeed to undermine the case for the reintroduction of legal aid in some areas in the future."

Nicolas Patrick, a full-time pro bono partner at DLA Piper, says: "We believe our role is to identify the most vulnerable cases, and use that experience to go for law reform, and ask for reinvestment. There's definitely capacity for us to get involved in law reform and policy discussions.

"We're not servicing the needs of vulnerable people at the moment. There's no flexibility in the system, and little in the way of a pathway to pro bono. We need to create more flexibility. For example, law centres in Australia get untied grants for legal aid funding; that doesn't currently exist in the UK and it needs to happen."

As for the 25 hours figure, Morton-Ramwell says the group will review the target every two years, with the hope that it will soon increase to 35 hours. "By working together we'll accomplish so much more," she says. "The more work we can do, the more we can use our clinics and experience of pro bono to gather the data to show the government that there are significant gaps, lobby for legal aid and push for proper funding of the system."

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'Retirement is a dirty word' – pro bono post-partnership
As a Legal Week cover feature detailed earlier this month ('Age concerns', 3 October), partners coming up to their firm's retirement age often face an uncertain future. But for a handful of senior corporate lawyers, pro bono work represents an opportunity to remain at the firm.

"Retirement is a dirty word," says Paul Newdick, who moved into a consultant role at Clyde & Co after 25 years as a litigation partner at the firm. He now focuses on community programmes at Clydes and pro bono group LawWorks. That work includes supporting emerging artists through business advice and pro bono assistance, helping at an employment clinic run with Brent's Citizens Advice Bureau, and, with LawWorks, supporting individuals most affected by the removal of civil legal aid.

For Newdick, another area of focus is how to support lawyers at the end of their career who want to get involved in pro bono. "I have been thinking a lot about how lawyers coming out of full-time practice can participate in pro bono activities that play to their skills and experience," he explains. Part of this thinking has involved the development of a fellowship programme through LawWorks.

"For most, it is not realistic to expect them to advise in our clinics or more specialist pro bono areas as they have developed different skills in practice."

For other lawyers, there are opportunities to use skills honed in private practice. DLA Piper counsel Rosemary Bointon, formerly a partner in the firm's London and Moscow offices, is currently on secondment to the Ministry of Finance in East Timor, working on the country's commercial agreements with international agencies such as the World Bank.

"As a lawyer with project financing expertise, I am the only lawyer on the government side who has experience advising on public–private partnership matters, the main project being for a new port," says Bointon, who also advises the secretariat of g7+, a group of conflict-affected nations.

"Work with pro bono can open a whole new world to you," she adds. "Even if your own firm does not have a pro bono department, there are many ways to become involved. I feel very fortunate that I have had the opportunity to participate in pro bono work in such varied ways."

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The Collaborative Plan for Pro Bono – member firms
Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld
Arnold & Porter
Ashurst
Dechert
Dentons
DLA Piper
Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer
Herbert Smith Freehills
Hogan Lovells
Reed Smith
Shearman & Sterling
White & Case