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Champions of Justice Quotes
"Lou Lesesne and I were honored to receive the first Small Firm Award for Pro Bono Service in 2000. We see most of our colleagues actively engaged in a wide variety of pro bono work. For most attorneys, it is a great and secret thing that they do out of the limelight and veiled by client confidences. For us, pro bono work takes on many forms: agreeing to represent an indigent client at no charge, reducing our fee to fit our client’s ability to pay, or to fit the result obtained in relation to the fee assessed. It may be taking on unpopular causes or clients, or serving on the boards or committees of charitable, civic and religious organizations. Little of this work is publicly recognized, but it is hard to imagine what our communities would be like without it.
We are given lots of reasons why we should engage in pro bono service: We are officers of the court. We are given a state-controlled monopoly on the right to practice law. Many of us attended public law schools subsidized by the tax paying public. It’s in the finest tradition of our profession. When you do good work you find yourself in the company of good people. All of this is true, but the real reason for our commitment to public service is that there is no other way to live: we are an integral part of the communities we live in, and this is talent we can offer to hold our society together and to make it great."
-Woody Connette (Essex Richards, P.A.)
Lesesne and Connette, 2000 recipient
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