Pro bono legal work remains an important part of access to justice. In a 2022 survey of attorneys in 23 states, 57% said they had provided pro bono services during 2022, while 76.7% had done so at some point in their lives. At the same time, the Legal Services Corporation reported that low-income Americans received no or insufficient legal help for 92% of their serious civil legal problems in its 2021 Justice Gap Measurement Survey, published in 2022. These figures describe different things: lawyer volunteer activity and unmet civil legal need.
Contents
- How much pro bono service lawyers provide
- Who receives pro bono legal help
- What legal matters pro bono work covers
- How clients and lawyers connect
- What motivates or limits participation
- How programs, technology, and law schools help
How much pro bono service lawyers provide
The ABA’s Supporting Justice V: A Report on the Pro Bono Work of America’s Lawyers measured participation through a 2022 survey of attorneys in 23 states. The survey found that 57% of surveyed attorneys provided pro bono services during 2022. Looking across their careers, 76.7% had provided pro bono services at some point.
The survey also shows that participation varies considerably by annual time commitment. In the report’s five-year measure, respondents described their annual pro bono hours as follows:
| Annual pro bono hours | Share of surveyed attorneys |
|---|---|
| 1–10 hours | 31.3% |
| 11–20 hours | 16.8% |
| 21–50 hours | 22.1% |
| 51–100 hours | 14.2% |
| 101–200 hours | 7.4% |
| More than 200 hours | 6.7% |
Almost 20% of surveyed U.S. attorneys provided at least 50 hours of pro bono service in 2022. The hour bands above come from the report’s five-year measure, reported in the 2022 survey, so they should not be read as a precise distribution of only the work completed during calendar year 2022. The percentages are survey results rather than a census of all U.S. lawyers.
The survey also allows a broader view of the people and organizations receiving help. Among surveyed attorneys who provided pro bono in 2022, 82.2% served individuals, 9.8% served classes of individuals, and 40.1% served organizations. These categories can overlap because some survey questions allowed multiple selections.
Who receives pro bono legal help
Pro bono service reaches clients with different circumstances and forms of vulnerability. Among surveyed pro bono attorneys in 2022, 10.5% reported serving ethnic-minority clients, 10.2% served single-parent clients, 8.9% served elderly clients, and 8.8% served people who were non-English or limited-English speakers.
Other reported client groups included homeless clients at 2.6% and migrant workers at 0.8%. These figures identify the shares of surveyed pro bono attorneys reporting service to each group; they do not estimate the percentage of all people in those groups who received legal help. They also should not be added together, since a client or matter may fit more than one description.
The wider access-to-justice context is substantial. The Legal Services Corporation’s The Unmet Civil Legal Needs of Low-income Americans (2022) reported that low-income Americans received no or insufficient legal help for 92% of their serious civil legal problems. That 92% is a measure of unmet civil legal need from the 2021 Justice Gap Measurement Survey, published in 2022. It is not a measure of pro bono supply, and it does not say that every unresolved problem could be addressed through volunteer representation.
What legal matters pro bono work covers
The 2022 ABA survey indicates that pro bono assistance often involves focused services rather than a single standard format. Among surveyed attorneys who provided pro bono in 2022, 42.4% used limited-scope representation and 34.6% used full representation. Limited-scope work can describe assistance with a defined part of a legal matter, while full representation covers the broader representation category used in the survey.
Reported pro bono cases covered a range of practice areas. Family law was the largest listed category at 21.2% of reported pro bono cases in 2022. Estate planning, probate, or wills accounted for 14.4%, followed by contract law at 12.4% and criminal law at 12.0%.
Other reported categories were litigation at 9.2%, immigration at 9.1%, domestic violence at 9.1%, consumer law at 8.5%, real estate at 8.2%, and business or corporate law at 7.8%.
| Reported matter category | Share of reported pro bono cases, 2022 |
|---|---|
| Family law | 21.2% |
| Estate planning, probate, or wills | 14.4% |
| Contract law | 12.4% |
| Criminal law | 12.0% |
| Litigation | 9.2% |
| Immigration | 9.1% |
| Domestic violence | 9.1% |
The case percentages describe the distribution of reported cases in the survey, not the complete universe of pro bono matters. Because the supplied report notes that some response options allowed multiple selections, percentages across categories do not necessarily total 100%.
How clients and lawyers connect
In the most recent pro bono matter reported in the 2022 survey, 23.4% of surveyed attorneys said the client came directly to them. More than 70% reported that the client found them indirectly. The contrast suggests that referral networks, legal-aid organizations, courts, community groups, and other intermediaries can play an important role in connecting people with volunteer lawyers, although the survey figures do not separately quantify each type of intermediary.
The work often aligns with the lawyer’s existing practice. In 2022, 65.2% of pro bono services reported by surveyed attorneys fell within their regular practice or expertise. Among attorneys whose work was within their expertise, 16.9% reported negative inconsistencies such as extra time or complexity. The corresponding figure was 8.7% among attorneys whose work was outside their expertise. These measures describe reported experiences with the most recent pro bono matter and should not be treated as a general measure of case difficulty.
The services most commonly reported by surveyed pro bono attorneys included legal advice at 78.4% and reviewing or drafting documents at 72.1%. For the most recent matter, 73% said the experience was consistent with expectations. Advice and document work can therefore be important entry points even when a volunteer does not take on full representation.
What motivates or limits participation
Attorneys’ views of pro bono service were generally positive. Half of surveyed attorneys rated local pro bono service as very important for low-income people in their state, and another 26.5% rated it somewhat important. In the same 2022 survey, 80.8% said pro bono work made them feel like good role models, while 79.3% said they felt happy doing pro bono work.
The survey’s outlook for 2023 also varied by activity. Some likelihood of providing pro bono service was indicated by 51.7% of surveyed attorneys. The shares indicating a high likelihood were 75.0% for in-person advice and counsel, 72.0% for virtual advice and counsel, 57.3% for representing a client in a case or matter, and 55.2% for answering clients’ questions through virtual written submissions. These are expectations measured in the 2022 survey, not counts of services actually delivered in 2023.
Time and risk remained important constraints. Lack of time was identified as discouraging participation by 56.4% of surveyed attorneys. Lack of malpractice insurance was identified by 38.6%. Those percentages describe reported barriers, not the share of attorneys who stopped volunteering for each reason.
How programs, technology, and law schools help
Institutional support can influence how lawyers find and perform volunteer work. Among surveyed private-practice attorneys, 32.9% said their employer encouraged pro bono activities, while 52.1% said their employer neither encouraged nor discouraged them. Separately, 37.5% of surveyed attorneys had reached out to legal-aid or pro bono organizations to find opportunities.
Technology can extend access to advice. In the 2022 survey, 32.2% of surveyed attorneys identified video platforms such as Zoom, Teams, Skype, or FaceTime as useful pro bono technology. The survey also found that 58.8% of surveyed lawyers had engaged in some form of volunteer activity during law school. Only 8.8% attended a law school with a mandatory pro bono component, according to their reported law-school experience.
The ABA Free Legal Answers program provides another measure of organized online access. According to the ABA’s report, ABA Free Legal Answers surpasses quarter-million questions, 11,000 volunteer attorneys, the service had recorded 253,280 inquiries through November 30, 2022, and had nearly 11,500 participating attorneys nationally by November 2022. During the program period from 2016 through 2022, about 40% of questions concerned family and children-related matters, while about 15% concerned housing and homelessness.
Those ABA Free Legal Answers figures are program totals and topic shares, not estimates of all U.S. pro bono activity. Taken together with the attorney survey, they show several layers of legal assistance: individual volunteer work, referrals through legal-aid organizations, limited-scope and full representation, remote advice, and structured online question-and-answer programs. The continuing gap reported by the LSC indicates why each channel matters, while the different measurement periods and populations mean the figures should be compared as context rather than combined into one national total.