Celebrating Pro Bono Service

by: Martin Ellin, Executive Director, AVLF

I went to law school in part because I wanted to be Atticus Finch. Never mind that my neighborhood was the city of Baltimore, hardly rural or particularly Southern; never mind that my neighbors were more likely to be named Jacob and Sarah than Jem and Scout. And never mind that by the time I went to law school American society had evolved enough that 20% of my class looked like Tom Robinson.

At that point of my life I had little direct focus, but as was true for the people of Harper Lee’s Maycomb, it was for me, as I entered law school, a time of vague optimism: what seemed likely to me was that wherever and whenever good lawyers were tested, there was the possibility of heroism and nobility.

And I was right.

Immediately upon entering law school I began to see the real-life embodiment of Atticus Finch’s sense of the importance of doing the hard work to promote justice. Whether it was the Judges of the 5th Circuit continuing to shape and sharpen civil rights, or lawyers on the Judiciary Committee fighting a President’s efforts to undermine the Constitution, or VISTA lawyers scrambling to find a legal toehold for migrant workers, there was validation of my belief in the profession.

Thirty five years of legal practice later, and especially from my perspective as the Executive Director of the Atlanta Volunteer Lawyers Foundation, I continue to be amazed by the dimension of the concern for the welfare of our people, our legal system and our country by lawyers. The profession, continuously tested, still presents opportunities to be moved by the expressions of dignity, integrity and, yes, nobility and heroism displayed by those of commitment and courage. Those virtues are visible in a number of settings, and at AVLF is demonstrated, among other ways, through the volunteer efforts of private lawyers conducting civil pro bono work for the poor of Atlanta thousands of times each year.

The ever-expanding participation of pro bono attorneys has become both an integral and indispensable part of the delivery of legal services to poor people. The American Bar Association has announced the second annual National Celebration of Pro Bono Week, October 25–31, 2010; the celebration is designed both to highlight the important work that lawyers do to provide equal access to justice and to invite greater participation in pro bono work from the legal community. As the Bar notes: “Ongoing efforts to expand critical representation to the growing numbers of people living on the social margins depend heavily on the involvement of volunteer lawyers… More than at any other time in the history of the country, there are both the resources and the technology needed to connect low-income people with critical needs to lawyers with the skills to address them. The National Celebration of Pro Bono promises to build on efforts already made and has the potential to be the tipping point for widespread, systemic pro bono participation.” The National Celebration of Pro Bono website, www.celebrateprobono.org, is the primary resource for information, publicity materials, and news about the celebration.

In Atlanta, among other things, the Atlanta Bar Association will hold a Celebrating Service luncheon on October 22nd (see the Atlanta Bar’s web site, www.atlantabar.org for details), at which the Atlanta Bar, Atlanta Legal Aid and AVLF will give their annual Pro Bono Awards. We congratulate all award winners- in fact we congratulate all lawyers who perform pro bono legal service- and we hope that you will share in the festivities.

I am proud to work among the open-minded, the generous, the ethical and the judicious, those whose work would make “the bravest man who ever lived” proud.