A Proposal to Create a Private-Bar-Funded "Lawyers Foundation" to Support Civil Legal Services
The legal services community needs more green!
Aric Press, editor in chief of American Lawyer Media and owner of a wonderfully Dickensian surname, has penned a thoughtful piece, proposing that Biglaw partners (and, we suppose, other well-heeled members of the private bar) could greatly advance the cause of access to justice by endowing and supporting a foundation to help fund both the Legal Services Corporation and other legal services projects. Press notes that LSC’s funding outlook in Congress is uncertain, but hardly rosy given the current fiscal state of affairs and the fact that LSC is something of a political football. He further notes that, recession notwithstanding, many law firm partners are doing quite-well-thank-you-very-much with respect to the ol’ cash flow.
The arithmetic is compelling. The surviving partners of The Am Law 100 continue to prosper even in the worst economic downturn of the last 25 years. For Am Law 100 equity partners, profits rose by an average of 8.4 percent, and the average compensation for all partners — equity and income — increased by 7.7 percent, to $1 million. I’m told one can live on that, even save a little.
There are 30,888 Am Law 100 lawyers carrying the label partner. On average, across their many offices, they bill roughly 2,000 hours at roughly $500 per hour. Were each to contribute the equivalent of 20 hours of billable time in cash — 1 percent — the resulting stash would reach $309 million. Toss in the 15,000 Am Law Second Hundred partners, and there’s more than enough to underwrite the annual LSC budget even after firms excluded their non-U.S. licensed lawyers.
The PSLawNet Blog supports creative thinking to channel more money to the legal services community. This certainly includes contributions from the private sector, and this certainly includes the bar. LSC’s model is, after all, emblematic of a successful private-public partnership. With that said, a caveat: in our view, the key word when thinking about what makes private-public partnerships work is “balance.” And for too long, Congress has not been holding up its end. LSC’s appropriation, in real dollars, has markedly decreased over time. And this has occurred even as demand for legal services – from domestic violence victims, homeless veterans, and children in need of healthcare – has grown too fast in light of the limited financial and human resources to help these would-be clients. So if the private bar is to move forward with a formal funding initiative, we hope that it will make a priority of lobbying the folks on Capitol Hill to hold up their end of the deal.
