At Paladin, we help lawyers find pro bono work that’s well aligned with their interests and background with the goal of increasing access to justice.
After some 2019 number crunching, we found four data-driven trends that guide how lawyers search for and choose pro bono that should help increase engagement in 2020:
If you’re looking to raise awareness of pro bono opportunities, send out emails on Wednesdays and Thursdays.
At Paladin, we tested initial email digest sends and found that the majority of attorneys open pro bono related email on Wednesdays (59.5%), followed by Tuesdays (28.3%), and then on Thursdays (7.4%). Perhaps it’s not surprising that folks feel overwhelmed coming back to their inboxes on Monday and then aren’t looking for more work by Friday, so the sweet spot seems to be mid-week.
Better yet, offer an internal, automatic portal to boost pro bono views.
Instead of scrounging through old emails and trying to remember key phrases to search, we’ve found that having a one-stop-shop where lawyers can go to peruse available opportunities, auto-populated across practice areas, communities of interest and different LSO partners, can boost opportunity views by 150%!
To activate first-time pro bono lawyers, focus on practice areas and lawyers’ specialities.
In one of our biglaw case studies, 27% of firm attorneys who did no pro bono in 2018 did some pro bono in 2019. We found that they searched first and foremost by practice area to find the right cases for them, which is also consistent with our focus group feedback of lawyers wanting to feel comfortable in their ability to win a pro bono case before signing up.
A Higher Volume of Opportunities ≠ Higher Engagement.
Despite a general sentiment that more is better, some of our partners with the highest engagement also had more limited opportunities (this is especially true for corporate teams). Attorneys explained that fewer opportunities led to a) more concentrated efforts and communication; b) greater teamwork and team building; and c) feelings of both scarcity and greater manageability.
As we continue to unpack insights and trends from our partners, we’ll be sure to share. In the meantime, a huge thank you to our 2019 firms and corporate legal departments who are using Paladin to streamline their pro bono programs. We can’t wait to have an even greater impact with you in 2020 😊
P.S. Have any other data you’d like to contribute and/or research? Shoot me a note at kristen@joinpaladin.com.
4 Data-Backed Learnings to Increase Pro Bono Engagement in 2020 was originally published in Paladin on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.