Serving the Common Good Where we Live and Practice

At Haynes and Boone we believe that a meaningful professional career is much more than just handling major business transactions or trying complex lawsuits. Our lawyers actively use the law for helping those people and organizations who need it most but are least able to pay.

Haynes and Boone is committed to supporting such opportunities for pro bono service and believes this kind of leadership is the right thing for a firm like ours to do. It serves the common good where we live and practice.

Taking Pro Bono Seriously
Although we believe that all of our lawyers should make personal decisions about public service, we formed our firmwide Pro Bono/Public Service Committee nearly 20 years ago to coordinate pro bono legal work and other public service opportunities and match them to our lawyers and staff. The Committee includes associates and partners, and our encouragement of pro bono service is reflected in the fact that more than 70% of associates and nearly 40% of partners regularly undertake pro bono work.

Our goal is that each lawyer should aspire to at least 50 hours of pro bono public legal services per year – and our annual total of some 17,500 pro bono hours is testimony to how seriously Haynes and Boone lawyers take the pro bono challenge.

We take these individual efforts seriously:

• Our lawyers are all required to report their pro bono hours the same way they report billable hours
• Pro bono time is viewed favorably in performance reviews
• Every associate is required to handle a pro bono case as soon as they join the firm.

Achieving Worthwhile Results
The matters that our lawyers undertake are as diverse as society’s needs. For example, we represent:

• Abused and neglected children
• Seekers of political asylum who face violence or death if they return to their home countries
• Indigent clients who need help ranging from family violence situations to defense in death penalty cases.

Often our efforts result in well-deserved individual recognition: recent examples include special awards conferred on Dallas partner Joyce Mazero by Promise House (a non-profit shelter for runaway, homeless and at-risk youths), and on Houston partner Alene Ross Levy by child advocacy group Justice for Children.

Organizations we assist include:

• 2011 New York World Police & Fire Games
• Volunteer Legal Services of Central Texas
• Dallas Volunteer Attorney Program
• Justice for Children
• Access Fund
• Promise House
• National Center for Missing and Exploited Children
• Human Rights Initiative of North Texas
• Houston Volunteer Lawyer Program
• Goodwill Industries of Dallas
• State Bar of Texas Access to Justice Commission