Pro Bono Is for the Good of Lawyers Too : Western State’s Students Are Enthusiastic About the Law School’s New Requirement

Training lawyers isn’t just a matter of teaching them the law. Done well, it also should foster a long-standing tradition in the legal profession in which attorneys--many of whom reap substantial financial benefits--return something to society.

But, unfortunately, lawyers’ so-called pro bono work has lagged in the United States. The American Bar Assn. estimates that existing private and public-interest law firms can service at best only about a fifth of the poor. That’s a sorry record.

Given the frequent stereotyping of lawyers as money-grubbing sharks, it certainly couldn’t hurt for the legal profession to expand the public service role of attorneys. Beefing up pro bono--a Latin term that is shorthand for pro bono publico, or for the public good--could help.

One effective way to instill a pro bono ethic in prospective lawyers is to require students to perform such work as part of their education.

A handful of law schools in the country now do so. Latest to join in this so-far modest, but extremely heartening, trend is Western State University College of Law, which has campuses in Fullerton and Irvine.

Starting next fall, Western State will require entering students in Fullerton to perform at least 20 hours of pro bono work in order to graduate. Of California’s many prestigious law schools, only Loyola in Los Angeles also has set pro bono requirements, starting with students entering in 1994. Only 12 law schools in the nation now make pro bono a requirement.

Western State’s Fullerton students will be able to fulfill the requirement in a variety of ways. They can work at a legal clinic, for an organization or at the school’s existing legal clinic in Anaheim.

So far, the idea has gotten enthusiastic acceptance among students.

Western State’s students generally are different from those at California’s other prestigious law schools. In general, they are older. They may be studying law as a second career or may be attending school while maintaining a full-time job. And some have chosen Western State because entrance requirements are not as stiff. Western State is a for-profit school that, while accredited by the state, is not accredited by the American Bar Assn.

But Western State students can hold their heads high. They have signaled a willingness to look beyond their own pocketbooks to see what they can do for society.

And that is the essence of what it is to be the kind of lawyer who gets everyone’s respect.