Pro bono in Germany: Berlin, Cologne, Düsseldorf, Frankfurt, Hamburg and Munich
Our offices in Germany are developing pro bono activities with the aim of making this work a recognised part of our daily legal work, as well as a recognised part of the legal education for trainees and associates. We aim for substantial partner participation, in areas of law where we can directly utilise our core capabilities, from applicable areas of law to transaction management.
We envisage a mix of domestic and international pro bono matters, the latter involving co-operation among lawyers from several offices in individual projects. In addition to professional development, we recognise such projects also enable our lawyers to create relationships between associates and partners who might not otherwise have had an opportunity to work together, and who will gain satisfaction from a shared purpose and project. We believe this will help to add to our sense of achievement.
As a first step, we are setting up a pool of lawyers interested in participating in our pro bono activities; we will then register their preferences as to areas of work, timing and availability, and jurisdictional aspects.
In line with our firmwide strategy, pro bono work in our German offices is given the same status as legal work for paying clients. It counts towards the recognition of an individual lawyer's achievements for purposes of evaluation and career planning, in the same manner as any other work done for the firm, and we pursue the same rigorous standards of quality and service efficiency given to our 'billable' work. However, participation in pro bono work is entirely voluntary for all concerned.
Our pro bono projects so far include the following.
- Our Cologne office continues to provide considerable pro bono advice to a community foundation, including the establishment of a sub-foundation, legal advice on a trade mark conflict, drafting contracts, etc. We also advised the US embassy on a new sponsorship through an incorporated society.
- A finance team in Frankfurt undertook a substantial piece of pro bono work advising Deutsche Bank on microfinance securitisation. Our firm won the International Financial Law Review European Pro Bono Award for this project.
- In Frankfurt, we are planning to offer workshops on selected topics (eg insolvency law) for our partner organisations to 'train the trainers' to be able to give better advice to their clients in their everyday work. We are also actively involved in the Frankfurt pro bono roundtable that is designed to promote pro bono work in Germany.
- In a joint project, our Frankfurt and Cologne offices have been advising a hospice on its foundation in co-operation with a hospital, as well as on trade law issues.
- Our Hamburg office has given legal advice to an intercultural dance project for disadvantaged children.
- All our offices give ad hoc legal advice to project partners and individuals involved in our programmes, where necessary (eg questions on inheritance law, immigration laws etc) and contribute to international pro bono projects when German law aspects need to be considered.
Our senior partner, Konstantin Mettenheimer, has recently joined the board of trustees of Common Purpose, which aims to improve the way society works by expanding the vision, decision-making ability and influence of leaders from numerous fields.