When he became managing partner of Bingham McCutchen’s New York office two years ago, Robert M. Dombroff’s mandate was to hire more attorneys and raise the outpost’s profile. Pro bono, he realized, would be part of that, but how to be more than just another cog in the pro bono machinery?

“Everywhere you went you would just be one of a variety of firms doing the same thing,” he said. He wanted to “make us stand out from the pack.”