Lawyers using AI are more likely to do pro bono work

Regardless of your politics, it's a cold hard fact that access to justice for those who cannot access legal aid relies on pro bono work from lawyers in the private sector.

Thankfully, nearing half (44%) of all lawyers in the UK have done some degree of pro bono work in the last 12 months.

44% of UK lawyers have done pro bono work in the last 12 months

Read the full Generative AI survey here

Rebecca Wilkinson, the Chief Executive of legal charity LawWorks, says pro bono work makes a massive difference.

"Just half an hour of a solicitor's time can make a huge difference to people's lives."

Wilkinson says she's seen a growing awareness in the legal community of the impact pro bono work can have.

"Most of the lawyers we work with are commercial lawyers. They have the skillset because of their training and their knowledge of the legal system to really help people who can't access legal support."

Yet a higher percentage (49%) said they haven't done any pro bono work in the last month. We look at why?

Before we look too closely at the 49% of lawyers that aren't doing pro bono work, it's probably worth a quick scan across other industries.

The London Benchmarking Group worked out that the actual engagement in employee volunteering is just 14.3% across all segments.

Yet despite the long hours and high pressure environment, lawyers are almost 3x more likely to do volunteering through pro bono work.

And if you look at barristers and lawyers from small law firms, the percentage is significantly higher.

The professional perks of pro bono work include making industry connections, picking up new skills, or for those still making a name for themselves, stacking up hours of highly sought-after experience.

Yet while some might choose to cast the legal profession in a cold or even heartless light, the lawyers that carried out pro bono work did so for genuine reasons.

Four-fifths (81%) of lawyers said they did pro bono work to make a difference to people's lives and just over half (57%) said society as a whole.

Four-fifths of lawyers do pro bono work to make a difference to people's lives

LexisNexis’ General Counsel of Global Nexis Solutions, James Harper, says that lawyers have a duty to leverage their unique set of skills and understandings to make a real difference for people that can’t access free legal aid, and potentially change the lives of those people. 

"The things that are so easy for a lawyer to do, those skills which are just innate, are so incredibly valuable and out of reach to many people."

AI's ability to streamline legal research, legal drafting and a host of other activities makes it a huge time-saver for lawyers. In fact, almost three-quarters (71%) of lawyers said the biggest benefit of AI is to speed up legal work.

AI could help lawyers have more time to dedicate to pro bono work. Our survey found 56% of lawyers using AI have done pro bono work in the last 12 months, a significant increase from the 44% industry average.

56% of lawyers using AI have done pro bono work, compared to 44% of all lawyers

This suggests lawyers working with AI have more time to dedicate to pro bono work.

Gerrit Beckhaus, Partner and Co-head Freshfields Lab at Freshfields says AI identifies key data points, patterns, and insights at a speed and scale unmatched by traditional research methods.

"Generative AI not only retrieves information but contextualises it, connecting disparate pieces of data and our knowledge pool."

In 2023, Freshfields contributed more pro bono hours than any other UK firm, accumulating 34k hours. Some two-thirds of all fee-earners were involved in pro bono work, averaging a total of 39.15 hours per lawyer over the course of the year.

The vast majority of lawyers, it seems, are eager to make a difference both to individuals and to society as a whole.

Yet the most career ambitious respondents in our survey are noticeably less likely to have done pro bono work in the last year.

Only 36% of those most eager to make partner, board-level director, general counsel, head of department, or start their own practice have done pro bono work recently, much lower than the industry average.

Only a third (36%) of the most career ambitious lawyers do pro bono work

Are they being forced to choose between pro bono work and their career ambitions?

Lawyers are under an increasing amount of pressure. Two-thirds (63%) said clients are more demanding. Many firms also increased their annual billable targets last year and the year before, and while some innovative practices have factored pro bono work into annual targets, many have yet to do so.

The reality for most lawyers is that pro bono work will come on top of meeting or exceeding their annual targets, or at the expense of their already neglected personal lives.

Yet the legal industry is changing. Our survey found 39% of private practice lawyers now expect to adjust their billing practices due to AI, up from only 18% in January 2024. We are also seeing employers switch the emphasis from hours billed to client satisfaction.

AI, alternative billing models and evolving performance metrics could soon see more time and resources being dedicated to pro bono work.

Wilkinson says the purpose of charities such as LawWorks is to help facilitate lawyers wanting to do pro bono work.

"If you've got these skills, let's find a way to hone them and utilise them," she says.