by James Potterfield

Created on: April 21, 2008   Last Updated: January 08, 2011

One of the most famous sayings of any time is, "There is no free lunch." This is true for literal lunches. Buffets that you may attend at business functions, while free to you, do cost the organizers money. It is also true for figurative lunches, or for this  particular article-legal services.

Let us begin by stating something some people may not realize: public defenders and pro bono lawyers ARE NOT the same thing. Allow me to repeat for those who did not grasp that the first time-a public defender IS NOT a pro bono lawyer for down and outs. Public defenders are paid for by whatever county, city, or state they are attached to and their services are provided for free to their clients, but not for free to the courts.

That having been said, pro bono work is a SERVICE that lawyers may choose to provide to their community or not. Requiring those who take the time and put the effort into achieving a law degree to provide free services is the same as requiring a neurosurgeon to perform complex and expensive brain surgery for free. It is not sensible to say that lawyers should have to provide their services for free any more than it is fair to say that McDonald's should now provide food to homeless people free of charge.

Lawyers open businesses for the same reason the rest of us do: to make money. Places like homeless shelters provide their services free of charge because the are NONPROFIT organizations. They do not seek money, but rather to do good. And while many people compare lawyers to vampires, this much is true about every single for-profit business that exists in this world: the idea if to generate profit, and keep your account books in the black.

Providing legal advice for free is one thing, but working for 200 hours on the defense and trial of someone who will not, at the end of the trial, pay you a dime is ludicrous. If someone walked into a TV repair shop you owned and expected you to work for 24 hours, or about three working days, without pay, how would you react? I can tell you how you would react: you would laugh in that person's face and ask them to leave your shop and either come back with money or not come back at all.

In all seriousness, saying that lawyers should be REQUIRED to provide pro bono services is unfair in the extreme. Anyone who advocates that principle should advocate free food, free medicine, free housing, free power, free water, etc, for everyone with equal vigor. But, strangely, those who argue most strongly for required pro bono services are often people who could afford to PAY a decent lawyer but do not WANT to do so. Paying for other things does not seem to be so much of a burden, but legal advice is just too much. I hope we can all see just how laughable the argument that a BUSINESS should provide free services really is, when it is presented in this light.

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