Lawyers Build Goodwill With Hammers, Nails

Lawyers Bob Miller and Rob Carlson struggled as they tacked insulation onto a wall inside the two-story house in Watts.

Downstairs, their law partner, Beverly Tiffany, pulled shreds of fiberglass and stuffed it around wooden window frames.

Another colleague, Derek Roth, was on top of the house next door, framing the pitched roof.

They were among two dozen members of the Paul, Hastings, Janofsky & Walker law firm who spent Saturday hammering siding onto outside walls and installing insulation.

One of three Habitat for Humanity houses, located on East Century Boulevard, is being built by lawyers and staff from 21 of Los Angeles’ largest law firms though a nonprofit group called Buildable Hours, a takeoff on a lawyer’s billable hours, the professional time for which clients are charged.

“There is a push within the firm not to just write a check,” said Carlson, a partner in the firm’s corporate department.

Miller doesn’t have time to do his own home repairs. But he picked up a hammer last weekend to do “something tangible for the community.... If I weren’t here, I’d be at the office.”

There are no pro bono requirements for lawyers in the United States. But the State Bar of California urged its 191,000 members last year to donate at least 50 hours a year to providing free legal services for the poor or not-for-profit groups.

Three states -- Florida, Maryland and Nevada -- require lawyers to report annually the number of pro bono hours they performed in an attempt to encourage such contributions. Supreme courts in other states, including Louisiana, are considering similar rules.

The reporting requirements follow decades of debate over whether lawyers should be forced to offer free legal services to the poor as a condition of being granted a license to practice law. Most legal authorities have concluded that mandatory reporting is a better option.

In California, the Legislature has offered law firms that provide free services a slight edge in securing state contracts.

Firms doing more than $50,000 worth of business with the state are urged to contribute the equivalent in service hours of 10% of the value of the contract under a law that took effect Jan. 1. A firm with a minimum state contract, for example, would have to provide 33 hours of pro bono work.

Firms have to “make a good faith effort to provide a reasonable level of pro bono services to Californians in need,” according to a fact sheet on the law compiled by the staff of its author, Assemblyman Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento). Failure to do so “may be taken into account in the awarding of future contracts.”

“As a large paying customer, the State of California can help to serve as a role model for other paying clients to encourage their law firms to provide pro bono legal services,” Steinberg said in describing the legislation. The law “is intended to help strengthen the state’s resolve to ensure that all Californians, especially those of limited means, have an effective means to exercise their fundamental right of access to the courts,” according to Steinberg.

It’s still too early to determine the impact of the law, said Daniel Grunfeld, who oversees Public Counsel Law Center, the nation’s largest public interest law firm, as its president and chief executive officer.

Last year, Grunfeld said more than 3,300 volunteers, including 1,900 lawyers, provided $43 million worth of free legal services through his organization.

“One of the silver linings in the weakened economy is lawyers ... have more time,” he said. “In some instances, there is less paying work for them to do.”

So, they are more likely to volunteer to help not-for-profit groups such as Public Counsel.

Grunfeld said pro bono work is usually understood as provision of legal services, yet he applauded the work of the legal construction crews. Many of the same lawyers working to build the house in Watts, he said, are “the same types of people who on Monday will pick up the pen to write the brief” for a homeless teenager or a victim of domestic violence.

Roger Goldman, who has a white-collar defense practice in Latham & Watkins’ Washington, D.C., office, founded Buildable Hours last year. Its growth has surpassed his expectations. Lawyers are building homes in Watts, the District of Columbia and the South Bronx in New York.

“I was looking for a way to make a more valuable contribution to society,” Goldman said. “We in large law firms recognize that we live in these communities and not just in high-rises above them.”

Goldman heads his office’s summer clerk program, and he knows how much money big firms spend entertaining law students they are wooing as potential new hires. “There are lots of fancy dinners, lots of baseball games,” he said, estimating that firms may spend $5,000 for a single event.

He knew it would be difficult to get firms to make a big financial commitment, especially in a weakened economy. So, Goldman asked them to set aside the money for just one summer event to help build a house for a needy family.

Then, instead of heading to the ball park, he suggested that lawyers go to the construction site and work alongside the law students they hired for the summer as a team-building exercise.

Los Angeles law firms donated $100,000 for building supplies, and their house should be completed later this month.

Won Me Park, at the Paul Hastings firm, said she is amazed at how quickly the house has grown from just a concrete slab.

She stood outside in the dirt last weekend and pointed proudly at a small plank of wood she nailed to the garage roof two weeks earlier.

“I’m surprised this house is still standing,” she said.