A Class-Action Case : By Requiring Pro Bono Work, Western State Hopes Its Students Will Follow a Higher Law

Let’s say you’re in law school. The first reaction you get is a slow sly nod. Ahhhhh, gonna make the big bucks. Drive a nice car. Wear expensive suits with tasseled loafers. Overcharge people for coffee breaks with other lawyers. Say, nudge, nudge, what do you call 500 lawyers at the bottom of the ocean? An excellent start. Heh, heh.

Not exactly a profession with a noble reputation these days.

But that may be changing slowly with new programs such as the one at Orange County’s only law school, where new students will be required to do free legal work for the poor and needy in order to graduate.

Beginning with classes next fall, Western State University College of Law in Fullerton becomes only the second California law school, and the largest in the country, to insist that aspiring barristers perform at least 20 hours of pro bono work. Already, about 200 students have volunteered.

It is an effort that appears to be growing nationally to instill a sense of ethics and social responsibility in budding lawyers, say program directors.

“Two years ago, there were only four law schools in the country that had pro bono requirements, and now there are 12 (including Loyola Law School in Los Angeles), so definitely there’s a trend,” said Paul Belden, spokesman for the National Assn. for Public Interest Law, a Washington, D.C.-based coalition of student groups aimed at getting more lawyers into pro bono work.

“These requirements are one way to get there if you want a whole generation of people committed to pro bono work. This is a crucial part of being a lawyer,” Belden said.

“The thing when you’re a lawyer is, you have a lot of power and authority, and if you don’t have a conscience, you’re in a position to do a lot of harm,” said John C. Monks, president of the 2,500-student Western State University. “But relating it to the pro bono program, I think there is some clear benefit to making students aware of poor people’s needs, the needs of the homeless, the abused.

“My main hope,” he added, “is that not only would they become sensitive to that, but they would continue to give their time to people who can’t afford it.”

The term pro bono is a shortened version of the Latin pro bono publico, which means “for the public good.” Tulane University in Louisiana was the country’s first law school to require it. When the first class required to do pro bono work graduated in 1990, members were surveyed about the new program.

Of 253 students, 65% said their work with the needy had increased their willingness to do pro bono work, and 72% said their hands-on experience had increased their confidence in their own ability to handle cases for indigent clients. The class provided 6,500 hours of free legal work to the community.

The impact on students and those results, were part of what clicked through Jeremy Miller’s head when the Western State ethics professor first started considering requiring law students to do free legal work.

“As an ethics professor, this is much easier and better than just telling your students, ‘help the poor.’ They actually do it,” Miller said.

He had attended Tulane and followed the progress of its pro bono program, and one day last year he polled a class of students about it. They were decidedly enthusiastic.

At the same time, the leadership of Delta Theta Phi, Western State’s largest student organization on campus, had been stewing over the same idea.

“We were going to do it anyway, on a smaller and voluntary basis,” said Judi Copenbarger, 29, of Anaheim Hills, vice dean of the fraternity. She hopes to go into estate planning law until her student loans are paid off, then she will pursue pediatrics.

Other campus organizations like the student bar association, the campus student government body, were polled for a reaction to the pro bono requirement.

Faculty and students on a committee studying the pro bono idea initially anticipated some resistance to the added time burden. About 60% of Western State’s students are part-timers who take four years to get through law school. The population is older than the typical college campus, with a high percentage of students who are changing careers.

“The only concern was from a few students worried about time demands,” Miller said. “Even among those who won’t be required to do the work to graduate, there are 300 interested students willing to do it.”

“Our people were very gung-ho,” said Keith Youngblood, 33, and vice president of the Black Law Student Assn. He hopes to specialize in international law, particularly representing minority businesses. “We wanted exposure in L.A., not just Orange County, and to play down the stereotype that lawyers just want to make money.”

The pro bono requirement will be started as a pilot program at the university’s Fullerton campus, with 1,300 students the largest of its three (the others are in Irvine and San Diego). But university officials are encouraging students at the other branches to voluntarily participate.

Students entering the university in the fall of 1993 will be the first affected. Once they complete enough course work to become upper-class students, they will be required to perform 20 hours of pro bono work, and they can choose from a list of law firms, community groups or public interest organizations that are participating with the university. Or they can work with clients of Western State’s legal clinic. The Orange County Public Defender’s Office has already asked for help, Miller said.

Because they will not yet be licensed, the students’ work must be closely monitored by practicing lawyers. The university is hoping that the pro bono program will provide an opportunity for lawyers not presently doing free legal work to start contributing through the students they oversee.

“We do want to make it politically neutral; we don’t want to alienate someone and say, ‘you can only work for the American Civil Liberties Union and not a conservative think tank,” Miller said.

“I think it’s wonderful,” said Susan Allen-Perry, 37, of Lynwood, who was a major force in convincing the faculty--which took two votes on the matter--that students would not resist the pro bono work requirement.

“As students we have to give back . . . and to realize there will always be people in need,” she said.

A second-year student, Allen-Perry and the others involved with getting the pro bono program launched are fairly typical at Western State. Judi Copenbarger and her husband, Larry, 28, the parents of a 3- and 4-year-old, come from a family of lawyers but worked in another family business until switching to law. Youngblood had been an industrial engineer for McDonnell Douglas before changing careers.

Allen-Perry has a 5-year-old daughter and works part time at Bullock’s. She has a brother who is a sports agent and a husband who is an actor, so she hopes to practice entertainment and sports law, maybe representing theatrical performers.

“But a small aspect of what I want to do is work with men’s rights in family law,” she said. “I’m concerned in a small percentage of cases when men should get custody of their kids and don’t. . . . You do one kind of work and get paid so that you can do good things (for free). . . . Your behavior dictates attitude. You don’t talk about it. You’ve gotta do the work.”

No one seems to question the need for free legal services, and Miller thinks the program will be awash with organizations wanting help once they learn of it.

“In Orange County, there are 50 or 60 public interest groups who are understaffed. I’m a law professor, and I get two calls a week for free legal aid,” Miller said. “So I have to believe lawyers get that in one day.”

Youngblood, the father of a 3-week-old, works now for a Tustin lawyer but hopes to do pro bono work for his wife’s Los Angeles church, where he sees a real unmet demand for free legal help, especially among older people.

“I’m hoping,” Miller added, “that students will learn that law can be a very honorable profession.”

“We probably won’t get a lot more students and it probably won’t make us any more tuition and be some more administrative work, but it just seems like the absolute right thing to do,” Monk said. “It just seems when you get your license, you ought to give something back.”