Another national pro bono week passed into history last week, and with it the annual opportunity for City lawyers to remind the world of their prowess at painting railings and reading fairy tales to school children.

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The problem with this seemingly admirable behaviour is that big business assume duties many believe should be reserved for the state. Is it really a good idea to rely on an organisation whose priority is making money to provide legal advice for those who can't afford it? What if there is a change in strategy or the firm hits trouble? Job cuts at Clifford Chance brought a 29% overall decline (pdf) in the firm's pro bono work this year. And who is taking on the pro bono clients assisted by Halliwells, the corporate law firm that recently went bust?

 

The huge cuts to the legal aid purse we are about to see could soon relegate much of this debate to the realm of the theoretical. One of the effects of losing £350m from the existing £2.1bn budget will surely be to put corporate law firms under greater pressure to muck in with the provision of legal aid. Like it or not, we're going to become much more like the US, where lower levels of government funding mean big corporate law firms are seen as having a social duty to provide pro bono legal services – and as a result do about four times as much as their British counterparts.