Esther Lardent didn’t mince words. The pro bono situation — and access to justice for the poor — is “hideous,” Lardent, president of the Pro Bono Institute, said during an interview. “People talk about the justice gap; I now refer to it as the justice chasm.”
There’s a bit of a data lag here — surveys of law firm’s pro bono hours won’t be available until later in the new year. The National Law Journal affiliate The American Lawyer reported in July that large firms reported an 8 percent decline in average pro bono hours during 2010. This year, “anecdotally, I think it’s very likely that the pro bono numbers will be lower, certainly than they were at their 2009 high,” Lardent said.
