This year, the New Jersey State Bar Association will award its first ever Mark Daniel Excellence in Pro Bono Award to recognize "exemplary pro bono efforts of corporate legal departments." Prior to Mark's death in 2020, Mark was managing counsel for patents at Merck and led its pro bono efforts for years, setting the national standard by which effective in-house pro bono programs are measured.

While I have no scientific proof for the following proposition, based on our 25 years of providing free legal services to small charitable nonprofits, it seems IP lawyers are particularly drawn to active participation in pro bono service. Like any other business, nonprofits have IP issues, such as protecting their organization and program names from infringement.