Law for The Poor

20101 MANAGING PRO BONO
2405
One counsel expressed concern "about contacting clients out of the
blue--4hey would wonder who's asking or why?" 236 Others were skeptical
that clients would know enough to make fair assessments of lawyer
performance:
* "If an outcome isn't what the client wants, that is not an indicator of
poor services .... Can clients assess the quality of services? It is like
us assessing the quality of doctors." 237
* "It is not clear clients could evaluate service in any worthwhile way.
They don't know what another lawyer could have accomplished. 2 38
* "[Polling clients is a] [h]omet's nest .... It would generate a lot of
complaints that may not be fair. Sometimes clients have too high
expectations. [Sometimes] successful pro bono is getting clients to
recognize whether they have a meritorious claim. Victory is the least
bad outcome." 239
5. Social Impact
The challenge of assessing the public benefit from pro bono service
appeared even greater. No firms reported any systematic efforts to evaluate
the social impact or cost-effectiveness of their work. Most relied on
informal conversations with nonprofit partners and assessments by firm
lawyers and pro bono counsel. As an illustration, one counsel described an
annual pro bono retreat attended by the "pro bono leaders . . . from all the
offices .... We lock ourselves in a room and talk about impact. ' 240 One
counsel was convinced that the way her firm selected cases ensured social
benefits:
We are fairly confident that our impact cases have broad applicability.
We also think it is critical to bring individual cases where important rights
are at issue. We identify areas of focus such as adoption and immigration.
We decide on those based on what our nonprofit partners tell us and what
our experience is. 241
Others relied on aggregate case outcomes as a measure of success. One
described compiling results in order to gather support for an ABA pro bono
award his firm was receiving: "When I saw the range of what we did across
cases, it was impressive .... Putting together the supporting [data] lets you
see social impact. '242
236. Interview 2, supra note 215.
237. Interview 26, supra note 162.
238. Interview 8, supra note 155.
239. Interview 20, supra note 148.
240. Interview 27, supra note 81.
241. Interview 2, supra note 215.
242. Interview 23, supra note 176.