Member Article

Top lawyers carry out £180m pro-bono work

The top 20 law firms in the UK carried out £180.9m worth of pro-bono work last year, which would account for 1.85% of their collective total revenue.

If projected across the UK’s 87,000 private practice solicitors, the amount of charitable work carried out by law firms would be worth approximately £456m per year.

Research done by legal recruiter, Laurence Simons, showed that on average, each private practice lawyer does £5,194 worth of pro-bono work for those who cannot afford legal representation.

This accounts for around 29.6 hours per lawyer in the top 20 firms, which would equate to just under 1.1m hours across all UK firms.

Director of Private Practice at Laurence Simons, Guy Adams, commented: “Few profit making organisations can boast that the amount of charitable work they do is equivalent to 2% of their total revenue, but pro bono is a fine tradition among law firms of providing free expert advice for the public good.

“With cuts to legal aid affecting access to justice for those who can’t always afford it, it has never been more important.”

He added that criticism of bonuses that city workers and lawyers receive was not the bottom line when charitable work takes up a certain amount of time.

Firms in London have engaged with projects connected with the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games, while others worked on an international scale, for instance to secure television rights to show the Paralympic games in Haiti.

The week from Monday 5th November is Pro-bono week in the UK, which aims to celebrate and explore further opportunities for pro-bono work and its role in the legal justice system.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Miranda Dobson .