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My firm, as do many, offer summer associates the opportunity to work pro bono for organizations such as legal aid. For those who have summered already, how many SA actually do this? I do like the idea of working pro bono, but when we only have such limited time to experience the firm, is it worth sacraficing 2/10-12 weeks?

Your firm will definitely appreciate it if you do it on your own time (saturday/sunday volunteering) under the firm's name.
They write off a lot of your hours anyway since a lot of clients don't like paying for 1L's.

turbotong wrote:Your firm will definitely appreciate it if you do it on your own time (saturday/sunday volunteering) under the firm's name.
They write off a lot of your hours anyway since a lot of clients don't like paying for 1L's.

My firm only gives the option of working for 2 weeks, or not. No in between option.

Anonymous User wrote:My firm, as do many, offer summer associates the opportunity to work pro bono for organizations such as legal aid. For those who have summered already, how many SA actually do this? I do like the idea of working pro bono, but when we only have such limited time to experience the firm, is it worth sacraficing 2/10-12 weeks?

So, I did not do it, but several people at my firm did it. If I had to estimate, somewhere around 20% of the SAs.

More so how much it disrupts your summer than it is how much time it takes away. Specifically, these stints are usually in the middle of the summer. When you come in, it will take you about a week until they really find work for you and get you rolling. Then, you'll do that for a few weeks, then the week before you leave they'll start taking you off matters so you're not in the middle of anything when you leave for your pro bono stint. Then when you come back it'll take close to a week or so to get you rolling again. So rather than spending one week getting used to things/ramping up on work, you'll spend three weeks where you're sort of working, but sort of not because they don't want to give you anything new before you leave, or because they're trying to find work for you.

The other downside is you're unlikely to get staffed on a big, long project that will take the whole summer, since they know you will be taking two weeks to do pro bono work in the middle. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but can be if the bigger, longer term matters are more interesting.