Most major law firms trumpet their commitment to pro bono work, but the Holland & Knight national firm has literally put its money where its mouth is. Participants in the firm's Chesterfield Smith Fellowship Program do nothing but pro bono work for their first two years with the firm - but receive full salary and partnership track credit for the entire time.
Holland & Knight, a 1,200-attorney firm, has had a Community Service Team program for pro bono work since 1990. In 1999, the firm conceived the idea of the Smith Fellowships, named for former firm president Chesterfield Smith. Selected law students spend the summer following their second year with the firm - half of the summer working with public interest advocacy groups and half doing billable work for the firm. Those who perform as expected are invited to join the firm as full-fledged Smith Fellows after graduation - unless they are chosen for a federal clerkship - and spend the next two years working strictly on pro bono cases.
The first class of Smith Fellows consists of five first year associates and three who will join the firm upon graduation from law school or, in several cases, completion of federal clerkships. And what a class it is - one Rhodes Scholar, one former U.S. Supreme Court law clerk, and all eight are graduates of Harvard, Yale, NYU or Georgetown law schools. Gretchen Rohr, the Rhodes Scholar in the group, worked with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund in New York after graduating from Oxford University's School of Jurisprudence and completing her first year at Georgetown Law School. While there, she worked with Laura Fernandez, a graduate of Harvard University, a 2002 Yale Law School grad, and one of Holland & Knight's first Smith Fellowship recipients.
"An attorney working with us told me Laura had a great fellowship, but hadn't told anyone about it," Rohr said. When Fernandez told her the details, Rohr wasted no time calling Stephen Hanlon, the firm's Community Services Team director, in the Washington, D.C. office, to apply. After spending the summer of 2002 in the firm's Atlanta office working primarily on capital punishment cases with the Southern Center for Human Rights, Rohr returned to the Atlanta office to begin her two-year Smith Fellowship as an H&K associate after graduation and the Bar exam this summer.
The program represents a significant financial commitment on the firm's behalf. Hanlon did not put an exact dollar figure on it, but since all Smith Fellows earn a full associate salary, the outlay figures to be over $2 million for the eight two-year fellowships in salary, not to mention support service costs.
On the other hand, the program has rewards for the firm over and above the satisfaction of providing pro bono service to under-served clients. First and foremost, it has opened up new recruiting channels for some of the country's top student talent.
"We have not always been a national firm," Hanlon said. "We are now, although we're sort of the new kid on the block, and this is our way of introducing ourselves. We're now able to attract students from the top of the class at Harvard, Yale and NYU, and for the first time we recruited directly from the U.S. Supreme Court."
Holland & Knight has traditionally been among the nation's leaders in pro bono service commitment, at 50 hours per lawyer per year, or 60,000 hours firm-wide. Told of the H&K program, Equal Justice Works (formerly NAPIL) head David Stern said, "That's absolutely typical of Holland & Knight." Lynn Schultz-Writsel, the organization's communications director, said, "That's not only financial, but a significant investment in kind on their part. We certainly applaud that commitment."
Although the full salary allows students to pursue their pro bono interests without worrying about how they will repay law school loans, Rohr says there is more to the program's allure.
"I really don't think any of us are in it because this is great pay," Rohr said. "H&K spends a lot of time ensuring that the people in the program are really devoted to the mission of the program."
This story appeared in the January 2003 edition of The National Jurist, nationaljurist.com.
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