by Brooke Lorren

Created on: November 13, 2009

"You get what you pay for" is a common saying. This is not always true, but in many cases, you will get a better quality product if you pay more. During criminal trials, court-appointed attorneys are often viewed as a poor substitute for an attorney that a client pays for. It often seems as if wealthy individuals can buy their way into innocence, while the poor are stuck with lawyers that don't care about their situation. Currently some lawyers voluntarily offer pro bono services as a way to give back to the community, because they care about a specific cause, or because they are just kind-hearted people. Presumably, these lawyers will do their best because they want to be serving others. Requiring lawyers to provide pro bono services against their will would only result in poor quality work. Additionally, requiring any form of involuntary service is akin to slavery, punishes success and hard work, and rewards the lack of success.

It is true that lawyers generally get paid well for what they do; however, the path to becoming a lawyer is difficult and expensive. Law students spend countless hours working for their degrees with the expectation that after graduation, they will be able to find a good job. They earn their right to work in this profession. If the path to becoming a lawyer was easy, more people would do it, and the supply of lawyers would exceed the demand, which would drive down the salaries of lawyers. Requiring lawyers to provide pro bono services punishes those who work hard to achieve in favor of those who either did not or could not.

Although redistributing the wealth from the rich to the poor is a popular concept these days, it is an socialistic concept that tends to drive down productivity. If a person is able to get something for free (whether it is money, food, or lawyer's services), motivation to work for it is taken away. If a person is punished for their success and forced to give some of their labor away (whether through higher taxes or forced pro bono services), the motivation to work hard is also reduced. There is a cost to working hard, and if the benefits of doing so are taken away, fewer people will be willing to work as hard.

Requiring a lawyer to work pro bono removes much of the motivation to work hard for their client. Why would a lawyer want to work hard for a client that they did not want to work for and were not receiving any compensation for? Although a trial lawyer's win-loss record could be affected, in civil law, poor pro bono work would not matter much. If a divorce lawyer didn't work as hard, the client might end up with a less favorable settlement. A pro bono lawyer working in a class-action suit may settle for less money. In many cases, half-hearted work on forced pro bono cases would not negatively affect the lawyer's career. I would not want a lawyer working for me pro bono if they didn't want to be there.

There are other ways to promote pro bono work among lawyers without resorting to forced labor. Tax benefits could be extended to lawyers that chose to volunteer their time to cases. Advertising campaigns that promote volunteerism could be directed at lawyers. Lawyers that wanted to volunteer their time and felt good about it would work harder than if forced. On the other hand, forcing lawyers to work for free would be socialistic and produce poorer results.

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