An article by the AFR’s legal editor, Michael Pelly, identifies Arnold Bloch Leibler as having the top ranking in this year’s National Pro Bono Target Report of Australian law firms, released last week by the National Pro Bono Centre.
The National Pro Bono Target is 35 hours per year per lawyer averaged out across a firm. In the last year, the Australian legal profession reported a record-breaking 641,966 hours of pro bono legal work - by far the highest number of pro bono hours ever reported and an increase of 16% since FY20.
As the AFR notes, the report does not identify firms, simply listing them by a number. Of course, firms know who they are because they provide the numbers, and the article recognises Arnold Bloch Leibler as having come out on top of the small firm category – up to 200 lawyers – and the overall greatest contributor at 70.5 hours per lawyer.
“Despite all we have each endured and continue to endure in our personal lives, as a firm and as a team we still managed to carry out more pro-bono hours in the public interest in the last year than we ever have before in the storied and proud history of our firm.”
It quotes from an email sent firmwide last Friday by public interest partner Peter Seidel, reporting that the firm’s fee earners carried out a staggering 11,110 hours of pro bono public interest law work with a production value totalling well in excess of $7 million. Peter described the outcome as “a result for the ages”.
“Despite all we have each endured and continue to endure in our personal lives, as a firm and as a team we still managed to carry out more pro-bono hours in the public interest in the last year than we ever have before in the storied and proud history of our firm.”
To read the article in the AFR, click here.
