I’ll skip to the Tl;dr part: On March 10, I donated all of my 6.5 billable hours to support Ukraine and, at $300.00 an hour, I raised $1,950.00 for World Central Kitchen’s refugee relief efforts.
In the grand scheme of things, it’s not much, but, to my little firm, a day’s worth of revenues is a lot.
This has been a law firm fund-raising concept that I’ve pondered for a while.
With the demands and time constraints that so many lawyers face, it’s hard to make time to volunteer at Legal Aid. But, if lawyers are already sitting at our desks, why not cut out the transit time and simply donate an hour (or more) of billable time per month to a good cause?
Of course, this grand idea works best at a big firm, where one hour a month is just a blip on an individual lawyer’s hourly billables report but, at the same time, results a substantial amount of money each month when you’ve got 40-50 lawyers participating.
Get a few law firms doing this instead of the standard “sponsor a table at a dinner” contribution, and you’re talking real money going to local charities.
So, to put my money where my mouth is, I’ll continue to do this each month, supporting different charitable causes by direct cash payments representing a billable hour.
Next month, I will donate time on April 13 to support the International Rescue Committee’s work helping Syrian refugees. I’m open to suggestions for the month after that.
And, in the interim, I promise to get back to law blogging. Thanks for your support.
Creditors Rights 101 