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The areas most pro bono efforts go towards revealed
With the majority of law firms dedicating their pro bono work towards organisations, rather than individuals, what sectors are seeing the greatest benefit?
Emma Musgrave
The Australian Pro Bono Centre has released its seventh National Law Firm Pro Bono Survey, which examines the pro bono output of Australian firms with 50 or more lawyers.
Looking into this further, the report also shed light on what areas of law and practice law firms provide the most pro bono assistance.
According to the results, 33 respondent firms chose the option “not-for-profit organisations and charities” in terms of where they concentrated their efforts.
This was followed by “other civil society/community organisations” (12); “Indigenous organisations, including Aboriginal Land Councils” (7); “Community legal centres” (7); and “social enterprises” (5).
Continuing on from this, the report also highlighted what areas of law and practice do law firms reject requests for assistance.
“The Survey asked firms to indicate the five areas of law or practice in which they rejected the most requests for assistance (for reasons other than means or merit),” it said.
“A high rate of rejections across firms tends to indicate a high level of unmet legal need. Reasons for rejecting requests for pro bono assistance can include: there is a conflict of interest; the matter falls outside the firm’s areas of focus or other policy guidelines; the firm lacks expertise in the relevant area of law, or; the firm lacks capacity to accept the matter.”
To determine the rejected areas, firms could select from 36 different areas of law, or they could answer “other” and specify an area not covered.
The area of law most rejected by respondent firms in 2020 was charity and deductible gift recipient (DGR) status applications with 11 nominations, followed by corporate law (including incorporations) with 10 nominations, governance with six nominations; and tax (other than DGR), also with six nominations.
Emma Musgrave
Emma Musgrave (née Ryan) is the managing editor, professional services at Momentum Media.
Emma has worked for Momentum Media since 2015, including five years spent as the editor of the company's legal brand - Lawyers Weekly. Throughout her time at Momentum, she has been responsible for breaking some of the biggest stories in corporate Australia. In addition, she has produced exclusive multimedia and event content related to the company's respective brands and audiences.
Prior to joining Momentum Media, Emma worked in breakfast radio, delivering news to the Central West region of NSW, before taking on a radio journalist role at Southern Cross Austereo, based in Townsville, North Queensland.
She holds a Bachelor of Communications (Journalism) degree from Charles Sturt University.
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