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The Meaning of Pro Bono: Institutional Variations in Professional Obligations among Lawyers

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2024

Robert Granfield
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Abstract

Recent data on lawyer participation in pro bono have suggested that such work flows from the intrinsic value one derives from volunteering as well as from workplace characteristics of those who provide pro bono service. This finding would imply that pro bono emerges not merely from individual personality traits but that the workplace environment structures motives and incentives for pro bono work. Such a finding points to a need to disentangle the effects of diverse workplace settings on the construction of different vocabularies of motive for engaging in pro bono work. In this article I employ an institutional framework to examine the impact of the workplace environment on participation in pro bono work among lawyers. Survey data were collected from 474 lawyers who graduated from three law schools that have mandatory pro bono requirements. Results indicate that lawyers' meanings of pro bono as well as their motivations for doing such work and the benefits they attribute to such work vary across workplace settings. These results are discussed in relation to institutional theory.

Type
A Serendipitous Symposium: Two Issues Confronting the Legal Profession
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 41 , Issue 1 , March 2007 , pp. 113 - 146
Copyright
© 2007 Law and Society Association.

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Footnotes

The author wishes to thank Mike Farrell, Clarke Gocker, Tom Koenig, Lynn Mather, Jack Schlegel, Debra Street, Mary Nell Trautner, and the four anonymous manuscript reviewers for their comments on earlier versions of this article. This research was supported by a grant from the Law School Admission Council.

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