Rule 6.1 of the American Bar Association”™s Model Rules of Professional Conduct handbook says: “Every lawyer has a professional responsibility to provide legal services to those unable to pay.”
The rule does not elaborate on why lawyers should participate in pro bono services, but for Susan M. Corcoran, an attorney in the White Plains office of law firm Jackson Lewis PC and a volunteer for Pro Bono Partnership, “You just sort of do it because you want to do it, and you continue to do it.”
- Susan M. Corcoran
While most volunteers at Pro Bono Partnership, a nonprofit that provides transactional legal services to tristate-area nonprofit organizations helping the disadvantaged, take on one or two projects a year, Corcoran volunteered for five last year. And since the organization”™s inception in 1997, Corcoran has worked on 44 different projects for the partnership”™s clients.
“Frankly, Susan never says no,” said Maurice K. Segall, Pro Bono Partnership”™s program director for its White Plains office, adding that she “is at the very top of the thousands of volunteers we have worked with over the past.”
Because of Corcoran”™s commitment to the partnership, it nominated her for the Distinguished 2014 Empire State Counsel award of the New York State Bar Association, and she won.
“The Pro Bono Partnership organization has been an organization that has always interested me,” Corcoran said. “You take that with the fact that you”™re helping organizations that are limited in funding and they”™re helping other individuals and providing services to those who can”™t afford. So you put that in a package and it sort of was just natural.”
Corcoran focuses on workplace law at Jackson Lewis ”” which ranges from counseling on contracts and employer-employee relations issues to employer training and educating on wage-hour laws ”” and those are the services she provides to Pro Bono Partnership.
- Maurice K. Segall
The partnership is described by Segall as having a dual mission: to provide free business legal services to nonprofit organizations and to engage lawyers to provide legal advice, in their areas of expertise, to the partnership”™s clients.
During its nearly 20-year history, Pro Bono Partnership has expanded throughout the tristate area with offices in New Jersey, Connecticut and White Plains. The White Plains office serves Westchester and Fairfield counties. The nonprofit grew out of a similar organization started in New York City.
Some of the clients served by the partnership”™s White Plains office in 2014 included the domestic violence shelter My Sister”™s Place, the Family YMCA at Tarrytown, Greenwich United Way and the Bridgeport Child Advocacy Coalition.
Last year, Pro Bono Partnership handled about 1,300 projects for more than 600 nonprofits, recruited about 900 volunteer lawyers and fielded roughly 1,500 calls on its hotline for general inquiries.
Nancy F. Levin, a spokeswoman for My Sister”™s Place, said the organization has used Pro Bono Partnership for more than 10 years and called its services “integral” to her organization”™s operation.
“(The Pro Bono Partnership”™s volunteers) make the running of a nonprofit that much more efficient because they help us to be in compliance,” in a variety of areas, including zoning and contracts, she said.
“Nonprofits look to us as their law firm,” Segall said, adding that his organization also looks to volunteers to help keep the organization going.
Segall said that both Corcoran and Jackson Lewis are “go-to resource(s)” for them because they always provide prompt and thorough counsel, while also organizing workshops and webinars for their nonprofit clients.
For her part, Corcoran said her motto is, “It”™s not necessarily the number of hours you do; it”™s really the quality.”
I met Susan more than 20 years ago. She has always displayed that commitment to sharing her ability with the community. As a member of my professional advisory board and willingness to address an auditorium full of women on sexual harassment weeks before the birth of her first child, she was consistently and graciously contributing. A very well deserved award!