Our friends over at The American Lawyer yesterday went live with their annual Pro Bono Scorecard for 2020, a ranking of the Am Law 200 firms based on the average number of pro bono hours each U.S.-based lawyer performed and the percentage of lawyers at the firm who handed at least 20 hours of pro bono work last year. The folks at Am Law say the Scorecard sets out to measure "both the depth and breadth" of each firm's pro bono commitment—borrowing a phrase I've heard many a trial lawyer use to describe their own litigation bench.

First off, kudos to Covington & Burling, which topped the rankings, with an average of 177.8 pro bono hours per lawyer, and 85.2% of the firm's lawyers completing 20 or more pro bono hours. But real appreciation should go out to pro bono leaders and volunteer lawyers across the Am Law 200. By multiple measures, you all did more pro bono work in 2020 than you did in 2019. Am Law 200 lawyers in the U.S contributed 5.458 million hours to pro bono work, compared with 5.358 million hours in 2019. And in a year when getting work of any type done was, shall we say, challenging, the average number of pro bono hours per lawyer went up from 59.9 hours to 62.6 hours.