Lean on me

Law firms are collaborating in providing pro bono services alongside non-governmental organisations – and are achieving significant results for vulnerable clients. Sorcha Corcoran meets some of the solicitors involved

At a time when tents lining Dublin’s Grand Canal are headline news, the legal profession is already stepping up to the plate to respond to the migrant crisis by providing pro bono services.

Increasingly, this has involved law firms joining forces to achieve greater impact while partnering with non-governmental organisations (NGOs).

“The power of pro bono lies in the opportunities for collaboration it creates. By collaborating on pro bono, law firms can help more people together, resulting in better outcomes for everyone,” says Carolann Minnock, who leads the pro bono practice at Arthur Cox.

A current example is a six-week legal-information webinar series for Ukrainian people, which has been running since May and is supported by Arthur Cox, DLA Piper, A&L Goodbody, Mason Hayes & Curran, Matheson, and McCann FitzGerald.

Run by the Irish Red Cross and Ukraine Ireland Legal Alliance (UILA), the weekly Zoom sessions involve lawyers covering essential topics, including immigration, housing rights, employment, entrepreneurship, family matters, and criminal law.

Let’s stick together

Last September, another Irish Red Cross/ UILA initiative, ‘Legal communities unite to support Ukrainians on Maynooth University campus’ won the ‘volunteering’ category at the Chambers Ireland Sustainable Business Impact Awards.

This was the first collaboration of its kind: around 100 volunteer lawyers assisted 840 Ukrainian refugees at the temporary facility in Maynooth University in July and August 2022.

The participating firms were A&L Goodbody, Arthur Cox, Comyn Kelleher Tobin, Dechert, Matheson, Philip Lee, Walkers Ireland, and William Fry.

Eithne Lynch, head of pro bono at A&L Goodbody, is delivering a session on housing law for the current online information series for Ukrainian people.

“Over the next few months, the coalition of law firms will develop the online information sessions further to be able to reach more people,” she says.

Pledge

Such collaboration is the direct result of signatories of the ‘Pro Bono Pledge Ireland’ connecting with each other on a regular basis, Lynch adds.

“We take it in turns to convene the network and discuss what’s going well, identify challenges, and come up with ways to work better together. Momentum is growing, but there is a huge opportunity to make the approach more regional and engage more barristers.”

Coordinated by Public Interest Law Alliance (PILA) – a project of the Free Legal Advice Centres (FLAC) – the Pro Bono Pledge Ireland represents the first articulation of the shared professional responsibility of lawyers to promote access to justice and provide pro bono legal assistance to those in need.

Since it was established in November 2020, the number of signatories has risen to 99, comprising 51 law firms, 40 barristers, two inhouse legal teams, and six individual solicitors.

Work song

The willingness of signatories to work together is particularly evident during Pro Bono Week, which this year took place from 10-14 June.

On 13 June, around 50 signatories attended the ‘NGO Pitch Event’ in Blackhall Place, where two selected civil-society organisations presented on their unmet legal needs.

The pledge involves an aspirational target of 20 pro bono hours per lawyer per year as a minimum commitment. In 2023, A&L Goodbody lawyers provided more than 14,100 hours of free legal advice, equating to an average of 33 hours per lawyer. The current participation rate at the firm is 80%.

While this metric is important, A&L Goodbody is also focused on evaluating the impact of its pro bono work in addressing the most pressing needs in society.

Regarding international protection, for example, it has taken on many cases under the Afghan Admission Programme and achieved a 95% success rate, notes Eithne Lynch.

Lynch adds: “A&L Goodbody has had a great partnership with the Irish Refugee Council [IRC] for over ten years, which has increased our capacity to navigate the international-protection process.

“More recently, we have been adding value at an earlier stage of the asylum process, which is helping to minimise misinformation or disinformation. Models such as this can be easily replicated.”

Arthur Cox recently launched a pilot project with the IRC to help people applying for international protection. This follows the expansion of its immigration work in recent years, which has included assisting Afghan people fleeing Taliban rule (in addition to the initiatives to support Ukrainian people, mentioned above).

A migrant chef represented by Arthur Cox’s Employment Group at the Workplace Relations Commission was awarded €28,000 in damages in January as redress for discrimination on the grounds of race, and for harassment.

The case was part of Arthur Cox’s ongoing partnership with Migrant Rights Centre Ireland.

“After completing around six months of underpaid work, with excessive hours and suffering demeaning treatment, our client was in a very vulnerable position,” says Carolann Minnock.

“Arthur Cox is committed to completing 3,000 pro bono hours per year to support and advance the rights of refugees and displaced people under the UNHCR Global Refugee Forum Legal Community Pledge.”

During the past financial year, Arthur Cox lawyers have delivered a total of over 16,700 pro bono hours, representing a 10% increase on the previous year. The firm has achieved a participation rate of 74%, representing an average of 30 hours per fee-earner.

KIND of magic

A collaborative project that predates the Pro Bono Pledge Ireland – Kids in Need of Defence (KIND) – has grown from being a pilot in 2019 to now involving seven law firms, including Arthur Cox. The others are A&L Goodbody, Dechert, DLA Piper, Mason Hayes & Curran, Matheson, and Simmons & Simmons.

Set up in 2008 by Microsoft, and actor and former UN special envoy for refugees Angelina Jolie, the KIND organisation operates in many countries around the world, providing training to lawyers who volunteer to help unaccompanied minors. In Ireland, KIND is administered by the IRC and the Immigrant Council of Ireland.

DLA Piper opened its Dublin office in 2019 and its pro bono activity in Ireland has been growing organically alongside its presence here, according to Marcus Walsh, who leads the firm’s Irish pro bono practice.

He predicts that the Dublin office, which now has a team of 115 people, will double its annual pro bono hours to reach 2,000 by the end of this year. In 2023, it was involved in 50 active cases and achieved a participation rate of 50-70%.

Practice what you preach

“It has been very beneficial to the Dublin office that DLA Piper has a sophisticated global pro bono practice, with over 200,000 hours of free legal services provided globally in any given year across the entire network,” Walsh explains.

Supporting forcibly displaced people is one of the three main areas DLA Piper’s international pro bono practice focuses on – the others are supporting climate justice and conservation, and good governance and shared value.

“The global strategy gives us the vision for pro bono. Signing up to the Pro Bono Ireland Pledge, and learning from and talking to other firms in the PILA network, has been huge in building up our pro bono work here. Once you’re plugged into PILA and getting to know other firms, the requests for pro bono work start to stream through,” says Walsh.

“The KIND project also involves regular meetings among the partners, where we talk about the cases and learn and develop expertise in cases involving children or minors arriving in Ireland without their families,” he continues.

Aside from KIND, DLA Piper ran a Ukrainian business bootcamp at the end of last year. It introduced its global ‘Know Your Rights’ programme in Ireland in 2021, supported by the IRC.

In 2022, this involved a partnership with Deloitte to provide three paid internship opportunities for refugees and asylum seekers.

Strategy

Another firm that plans to draw on its pro bono experience outside Ireland is Browne Jacobson, which in January joined forces with the British programme LawWorks to launch a new firm-wide pro bono strategy.

LawWorks brokers free legal advice from member firms to not-for-profit organisations. The new approach from Browne Jacobson aims to enhance its lawyers’ pro bono activities by ensuring they’re targeted, measurable, and align with both its practice areas and the firm’s core values – which include being at the forefront of society’s biggest issues.

With a total of 1,000 employees in Britain and Ireland, Browne Jacobson now has 15 people in its Dublin office.

“Our strategy in Ireland is still under development, but we have already learned so much from the early stages of our pro bono journey. Adopting a partnership approach shows how we can deliver a regular flow of activities, while filtering out those where we may not be able to contribute so easily,” says legal director Beth Dowson, who sits on the firm’s pro bono steering group.

“There is undoubtedly a rising demand in the profession for generating a wider social value. We are increasingly being asked in job interviews – particularly by the younger generation – about the opportunities and support they will receive to engage in pro bono work.

"A high proportion of our fee-earner base has registered an interest in participation since launching the new strategy.”

House of the rising sun

Looking forward, an area with significant untapped potential is in-house pro bono work – considering that an estimated 4,000 solicitors in Ireland now work in-house, according to Catherine May (general counsel with Bank of America Europe).

“In recent years, the in-house legal sector in Ireland has seen considerable growth, and there has been a noticeable increase in the number of in-house legal teams providing free legal services to not-for-profit charitable organisations and individuals. Examples include areas like housing, immigration, board governance, data protection, and environmental action,” says May.

“The feedback from in-house volunteers is that pro bono activity can provide valuable learning and be immensely satisfying. This has been my personal experience, whether providing information and advice through FLAC, advising international-protection applications on their rights, or advising charities on reviewing and negotiating contracts.”

To mark international Pro Bono Day in April, Bank of America participated in an event in Dublin to support the IRC and international-protection applicants seeking to enter the labour market in Ireland.

It worked alongside legal teams from A&L Goodbody, AIB, BNP Paribas, BNY Mellon, DCC, PTSB, Stripe, Visa, and Western Union to deliver sessions, on areas such as work visas and employment rights.

The event was the second of its kind to follow the establishment in 2023 of the In-House Pro Bono Network (PBN). In-house lawyers who wish to provide services to third parties – including pro bono legal work – must provide such services through a law firm or independent law centre.

Facilitated by A&L Goodbody, the PBN is a conduit through which in-house lawyers can collaborate to provide pro bono legal services in Ireland.

“There has been significant growth in the number of members joining the PBN since it was established,” says May. “We anticipate continuing growth in pro bono activity by in-house legal teams in the future.”

Sorcha Corcoran is a freelance journalist for the Law Society Gazette.