Summer Associates Initiative for Legal Services
SAILS seeks to bridge the gap between private and public legal services by giving law students working in private firms over the summer an opportunity both to dedicate resources to public interest legal services and to promote their law firms' commitment to pro bono work.
Law students working at firms over the summer frequently have the opportunity to have lunch with associates and partners from their firm at some of the most expensive restaurants in their city. These lunches introduce law students to members of the firm and provide an opportunity to discuss the firm's practice.
For instance, law students working at the law firm of Willkie Farr and Gallagher in New York City proposed that they be allowed to forego a day's lunch at a fancy restaurant and instead donate the money that would be spent to a public interest law organization. On one day during the summer, in lieu of dining out, Willkie Farr made a conference room available for a brown-bag lunch during which the firm's pro bono partner spoke about the firm's pro bono efforts and about the general state of legal services for indigent clients. Willkie Farr generously offered $100 for each summer associate who participated (the equivalent of a $50 lunch for both the law student and an accompanying associate or partner). As the summer associates requested, Willkie Farr donated the money to New York Legal Services.
We believe that this program can be easily replicated at firms nationwide and is a simple way for law students working in the private sector to demonstrate and reaffirm their commitment to a more equitable legal system while contributing resources to severely underfunded public interest organizations. Moreover, the program provides firms with an easy mechanism to educate their law students about their pro bono program.
To encourage SAILS's expansion, we will solicit law firms to offer this program to their summer associates on a day during a to-be-designated week in July and we will provide participating firms with materials that suggest guidelines for choosing recipient organizations, recommend programming for the day of the event and provide general information on the state of public interest legal organizations. Next fall, we are planning to publicize the summer's results in coordination with Harvard Law School's Office of Career Services (OCS) and Office of Public Interest Advising (OPIA) and national media.