Step into a half-day departmental meeting at most large companies and you might expect to find a few hours of business presentations and corporate speak, perhaps some pie charts and growth indicators. For Exelon Corp.’s legal department, those hours are instead filled with pro bono service, whether it means ordering birth certificates for clients or providing life-planning documents for senior citizens. The all-hands-on-deck meetings are just another opportunity for the company’s legal department to strengthen its connection to the community it serves.
Exelon is a pro bono leader, a “model corporate citizen,” as Marsha Cohen of the Homeless Advocacy Project said, in large part because of its top-down commitment to community service. Shortly after Peco Energy Co., of Philadelphia, and Unicom Corp., of Chicago, merged in 2000 to form Exelon, the company formalized a pro bono program, established a formal policy and appointed leads in both cities to help develop what would quickly become a robust program and a corporate trend-setter.
