Companies are increasingly encouraging their in-house legal teams to take on pro bono work to help contribute towards the business’s wider environmental, social and governance goals, according to panellists speaking at the International Bar Association’s (IBA’s) Latin America regional forum in Lima.

The discussion – the ‘Pro bono daily breakfast and plenary session’ – talked about what companies and law firms are doing to improve pro bono impact and how they measure that.

“We started doing research about 10 years ago, seeing how lawyers at companies can be more collaborative in pro bono, and about five years ago they started seeing how they can contribute to their ESG standard by doing pro bono work,” said Ignacio Obando, a co-coordinator at Red Pro Bono de la Americas, based in Toronto.

Some examples of that in-house pro bono work included PwC, which helped entrepreneurs who were in “vulnerable situations”, and Microsoft, which helped non-profit organisations with technology, said Obando.

In Peru, while there are not many examples of companies doing pro bono work through their legal teams, universities in the country do offer free legal clinics where they provide legal assistance to families that need legal advice, says Sergio Mattos, a lawyer at Rebaza Alcazar & de las Casas in Lima.

Mattos says that his firm is fully engaged in pro bono work because he believes as lawyers they have an ethical responsibility to provide legal assistance to people despite their economic situation.

“As a firm, doing pro bono work enhances our reputation, we believe that it adds value to the service that we provide to our clients, and it also helps us to attract top talent from Peruvian and also regional universities,” said Mattos.

In Brazil, law firm Mattos Filho worked with Mondelez’s in-house legal department to take on pro bono cases involving refugees and migrants, which led to the company employing some of their pro bono clients as part of their diversity and inclusion programme, said Flavia Regina de Souza Oliveira, a partner at Mattos Filho in São Paulo.

“Pro bono helped the company achieve one of its ESG goals of being a more diverse company, so it went beyond the law and promoted inclusion,” she said.

The panel also agreed that partnerships are a great way to boost the impact of pro bono work.

“If you want to really make a change, it’s very difficult to do it alone, so you need the cooperation of different actors,” said Marina Lazarte, executive director at Alianza Pro Bono Peru, a clearinghouse.

One of the challenges that firms and companies face is trying to measure the value of their pro bono efforts in a way that goes beyond just counting lawyer hours.

“A critical point in qualitative measurement is the difficulty of comparing different types of impact,” said Lazarte.

For example, a case may take a few years but have a significant life-changing impact for an individual, whereas another might take less time but not have the same level of impact.

“Aside from just the numbers, we need to ask every day, are we doing the right thing? Are we promoting access to justice? That is the most important thing,” said de Souza Oliveira.

The Global Legal Post has been reporting from The Road to 2030 in Latin America conference. Click here for further coverage.

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