Dennis McDermott said the work of the Pro Bono Partnership is “really about the best thing since sliced bread.”
The White Plains-based vice president of community relations in the Northeast at JPMorgan Chase lauded the provider of free business and transactional legal matters to nonprofit organizations as dually beneficial to clients and to the corporate attorneys who serve them.
“There”™s almost nothing from a legal perspective other than litigation that they can”™t come up with answers for,” McDermott said. “When it comes to really specialized issues like employment laws, bylaws or changes in Internal Revenue Service regulation,” he said, pro bono help is available from attorneys at the likes of JPMorgan Chase and others. The program participants range from General Electric Co. in Fairfield, Conn., to Wyeth, now Pfizer, in Pearl River., and PepsiCo Inc. in Purchase.
There were 752 volunteers last year.
Richard Hobish, attorney and executive director, said the organizational model “enables an in-house lawyer to work on a manageable, discreet project where they don”™t need to be trained.”
He made clear the fact that “we are not a brokering agency.”
“We don”™t simply match a client with a volunteer,” he said. “We assign a lawyer admitted in the appropriate jurisdiction who then oversees the matter and makes sure all expectations are being met.”
Hobish said some 20 percent of legal matters are handled by Pro Bono”™s in-house attorneys.
Of the volunteer base, about 50 percent stem from private law firms.
Last year, some 515 nonprofit clients were served through the partnership”™s offices, which are located in White Plains, Hartford, Conn., Stamford, Conn., and Parsippany, N.J.
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“Last year represented a huge growth in our program,” Hobish said. “It jumped about 50 percent in total (legal) matters resolved.”
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He attributed the growth to word of mouth and in part to the economic crisis.
Post downturn, a crisis management initiative addressed issues ranging from merger to downsizing in staff.
“Employment law is probably our largest area,” Hobish said. “During the recession, there has been a lot of talk of reductions in workforce, so that requires a lot of legal help. You have renegotiations of debt and leases. And we do a lot of corporate governance work.”
Hobish said another area of concern has been in “corporate accountability and transparency in the nonprofit sector.”
The new IRS Form 990 has been restructured, Hobish said, with heightened regulation on matters of compensation and potential conflicts of interest “and we”™ve been inundated with requests for help on those kinds of issues.”
McDermott noted an instance involving a program serving youth in Mount Vernon, which was told to fix its bylaws.
“Apparently, when the organization was chartered, their bylaws were structured in a way that said they didn”™t provide educational assistance to young people,” he said. “They had been struggling with their attorney and regulations and I said, ”˜all you have to do is call the Pro Bono Partnership and if they don”™t have the answer, they”™ll get an answer from a corporate legal department.”™”
An extensive screening process weeds out nonprofit clients that can otherwise afford legal help.
“The companies we work with rely on us for that screening because otherwise, they”™d be getting hundreds of organizations coming directly to them and they wouldn”™t know who they should be working with,” Hobish said.
The partnership was established originally in 1997 as the “Westchester County, NY-Fairfield County, CT Corporate Bar Fund.”
Peter Gutermann, vice president and general counsel at Pratt & Whitney in East Hartford, Conn., was just appointed chairman of the partnership”™s board of directors.
Funding for operations is: 40 percent to 50 percent from law firms, 25 percent from corporations and some 20 percent from private foundations and individual donations. There is very limited government support.
