June 1999 

The ABA Model Rule Means Billions from Lawyers to the Public

Sidebar to The Lawyer as Hero by Randolph I. Gordon

The ABA Model Rule is noteworthy because, for the first time, it seeks to quantify the amount of pro bono service lawyers are expected to provide. It establishes an aspirational goal of 50 hours of pro bono service per lawyer per year. That’s about $5,000-6,000 per lawyer per year.

With somewhere between 700,000 and 1 million lawyers (however you count them) the ABA has, in effect, proposed giving away another $5 billion to keep the justice system functioning. No, don’t bother, I’ll do it for you: that means that lawyers by this measure alone would be contributing (in addition to their tax dollars and bar dues used to regulate themselves free of charge to the public) 16 times as much as the entire U.S. population contributes towards the Legal Service Corporation.

By my calculations, this makes lawyers, who are, after all, no more than 1/265th of the U.S. population, more than 4,250 times as generous per capita. Feeling generous yet?

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