Getting public service on the agenda
A profile of Mary Ann O'Connor, a Section pro bono winner
By Erin Walsh
Is it possible to do pro bono in a corporate setting? Sure. Just ask this Chicago lawyer.
Call it good luck, a wise management decision or plain old serendipity, but Mary Ann O'Connor's appointment as chair of the Pro Bono Initiative for the New Millennium proved to be just the spark plug that was needed to launch an effort for the unmet civil legal needs of Chicago's poor.
In 1991, the Chicago-based Public Interest Law Initiative (PILI) had persuaded the city's leading law firms to join together in signing a statement of principles in support of pro bono legal work. Almost two years later, however, statistics hadn't much improved. Chicago still lagged behind smaller cities like Boston and San Francisco in the number of hours of public service contributed and the number of lawyers who participated.
Then O'Connor got involved. When PILI developed the Pro Bono Initiative (PBI) in the late '90s to get public service back on lawyers' agendas, she got the program up and running and started to turn things around.
"What sets her apart is the force of her personality," said Thomas Morsch, president of PILI when the first statement of principles was signed. "She's just a warm, sensitive, good person and brings people aboard without hitting them over the head."
O'Connor, first vice president and counsel for Bank One in Chicago, set to work updating and renewing the original statement of principles and trying to get corporate legal departments and transactional lawyers to sign on as well as law firms. Under her leadership, the PBI has since developed into a successful program with representatives from 29 law firms, 25 in-house law departments, a foundation and three law schools.
"She has done an absolutely outstanding job in increasing pro bono activity among Chicago lawyers," said Susan Shulman, a PILI staff person who has worked with O'Connor on the PBI for the past three years.
The ABA Business Law Section must've thought so, too. Based on Shulman's nomination, its Pro Bono Committee presented O'Connor with the National Public Service Award at the Section's April 5 meeting in Boston.
In addition to chairing the PBI, O'Connor serves as PILI's treasurer and sits on its board of directors. She is also involved in several other volunteer organizations, ranging from the Catholic Campaign for Human Development to the Midwest Immigrants Rights Center. The award, however, focused in particular on her efforts in developing the PBI and increasing public service in a business law context.
Morsch said O'Connor was one of the organization's first volunteers to come out of a corporate law department. While the focus had previously been on recruiting litigators, O'Connor served as PILI's gateway into corporations. She felt that although it might be harder to find pro bono work that wasn't a variation of courtroom work, there was an untapped source of transactional lawyers and law firms out there that could increase the pool of lawyers involved in public service.
"Chicago is now a hot bed of pro bono legal activity, and we're very proud of that," Morsch said. "Mary Ann made a unique contribution in getting corporations involved. That wasn't happening anywhere else in the country."
One of O'Connor's innovative approaches was developing a seminar series directed at low-income entrepreneurs. She has enlisted the existing law school small business and entrepreneur clinics at Northwestern University, the University of Chicago and Loyola University that already have a base of clients who can't afford to pay for legal services. PILI lawyers have teamed up with the different clinics to take the law students' initial counseling one step further, presenting seminars on an array of business law topics that entrepreneurs need, such as intellectual property, simple contracts, leases and employment contracts.
Lawyers from Bank One's legal department conducted the first seminar, "How to Keep Business Records and Maintain Business Formalities." After each presentation, participants have the chance to talk with lawyers and network with each other.
Morsch, now a professor at Northwestern Law School and an adviser for its Small Business Opportunity Center, said that about 500 people came into the clinic for help in the first four years of its existence.
"If someone needed a lawyer to look at a lease or a franchise agreement but couldn't afford legal services, there used to be nowhere to go," he said. "Now there are three clinics and many alternatives."
Another group within the PBI has taken a different focus, trying to get pro bono policies adopted at different Chicago organizations. O'Connor said that this is a completely new concept for most corporate law departments, and many law firms don't even have policies. A policy could be as simple as telling lawyers they're permitted to do pro bono work during business hours or use their secretary's time for that kind of work. The group has several model policies that they present to organizations, explaining how to set up committees and get a program in place.
"Corporations are particularly sensitive to the perception that they're telling people this is something they ought to do, but I think there's a huge opportunity to present it as, 'We support you in that which you choose to do,'" O'Connor said. "Those are encouraging statements — nobody's mandated to do pro bono work."
She said that since all corporations have a commitment to their communities, it's important for them to support public service in their legal departments. The PBI is trying to persuade senior people in organizations of that, which includes convincing them that public service is in their self-interest and is good for business.
So far, consulting teams have met with the law departments at The Northern Trust, McDonald's Corp., Heller Financial, Abbott Laboratories, Baxter, BP Amoco, Discover/Morgan Stanley, International Truck and Engine Corp., Kraft and Sears. These efforts have spurred some corporations to adopt policies and plan their first pro bono projects and others to expand their current programs.
McDonald's legal staff now has dozens of lawyers, paralegals and support staff working on presenting educational legal programs to inner-city students as well as providing legal services to area community organizations. Lawyers at the Northern Trust work with Pro Bono Advocates to obtain orders of protection for victims of domestic violence. Heller Financial is working with the Legal Assistance Foundation of Metropolitan Chicago Food Stamps Program, and Sears is working with Prairie State Legal Services to review contracts for low-income clients.
There is still more to do, but O'Connor said the efforts of the PBI have been successful so far. The push now is to keep the momentum.
"I'm really pleased because this initiative is now in its fourth year and I feel like we've done a lot," she said. "The awareness level that wasn't there previously, in particular in corporations, is a huge change. So I guess I'd like to continue and consolidate what it is we're doing because I feel like there's a lot that can happen."
O'Connor said that winning the National Public Service Award completely took her by surprise.
"I knew I was nominated, but a lot of times the nominations are, very sensibly, a strategic approach by the organization to get our program out there in the public eye," she said. "Just having lawyers on this committee considered for nomination seemed worth it. It frankly never occurred to me that I would win."
In fact, O'Connor had planned a four-day vacation to visit her family in Hilton Head, S.C., when the award ceremony was supposed to take place. Since Hilton Head isn't easily accessible, she ended up spending an entire day going to and from Boston for lunch.
She said that while she was honored to receive the award, she does the work that she does because of who she is. More than anything, the recognition gave her the opportunity to bring awareness to her cause and meet people from across the country, including people from the Business Law Section doing similar kinds of pro bono work.
O'Connor said she first got her ideas about giving back from her parents. Her mother was a traditional stay-at-home mom as Mary Ann and her brother and three sisters were growing up in Wilmette, a northern suburb of Chicago, and was always volunteering in the community. Her father, a lawyer, did both legal and traditional volunteer work. Through their example, they showed her it was possible to lead a full adult life that included public service.
O'Connor's personality was similar to her father's and she always thought she would follow his path in entering the legal profession. The law appealed to her because she saw it as something that would be intellectually challenging and would give her the opportunity to work with people. So she did the things that naturally led her to law school — joined the forensics team in high school, became involved in public speaking, majored in political science in college. She says she was relieved when she did well enough to get into law school and even more relieved when she actually liked it.
Between her second and third year at Notre Dame Law School, O'Connor did a clerkship with Sidley & Austin of Chicago. They offered her a permanent position after graduation, and she was the first person in that year's class to start working.
"I started there as soon as I possibly could because I knew I needed all four of my wisdom teeth out and I needed to get on their insurance program really quickly," she said with a laugh. "It proved to be a benefit because we were assigned offices based on seniority and thereafter I always got the improved, good office."
There's a fundamental distinction between courtroom and transactional practice, O'Connor said, and it didn't take long for her to figure out that she didn't want to be a litigator. When she started in the commercial law practice, she found it was a good fit. "After that, some of it's just serendipity," she said.
After a year and a half at Sidley, O'Connor decided that, looking ahead, the demands of a law firm were getting to be too great. Although she isn't married and has no children, she said it was important for her to have time to spend with her family and to do volunteer work. So she took a position in the law department at the First National Bank of Chicago — now Bank One — doing essentially the same thing she was doing at Sidley. She's been there ever since.
O'Connor said that since the bank's focus is constantly changing, she's been able to hold many different jobs without changing companies. She is now responsible for Bank One's private banking and commercial investment departments. Moving in-house has also allowed her to have the kind of lifestyle she wants.
It also helps that O'Connor's employer gives her time on the company clock to do volunteer work — as long as her client doesn't suffer. She said it's all a matter of being organized and efficient. Professionals understand that they need to get their jobs done and arrange their lives as they choose, according to their own priorities. Her advice to lawyers interested in making pro bono work a priority is first to find something they like to do.
O'Connor's own misperception was that the only legal service opportunities were doing things she had chosen not to do when she chose not to be a litigator. Now she knows that there is a huge need for nonlitigation legal services as well. Those services might be harder to find directly, but that's where PILI comes in — the organization can match up lawyers in any area of practice with volunteer work to fit their interests and abilities.
O'Connor also advises lawyers not to feel so overwhelmed that they can't do everything; even small contributions are most definitely worthwhile.
"Decide that you're going to do something and figure out what you have time to do," she said. "There's an immense value if you were to volunteer once a quarter at a legal service clinic. Or take back one transaction or one client. I think people sometimes feel like they have to be able to give everything, and that's not the case."
In her free time, O'Connor enjoys reading contemporary fiction, cooking and having people over. She loves the Chicago theater scene. She also loves eating, and considers herself the source for good restaurant recommendations for out-of-town suburban friends.
The day after her last first-year law school exam, O'Connor started running as a way to relieve stress. When she first started, she couldn't even run a mile without stopping. But she kept at it that summer and when she went back to law school in the fall, one of her classmates who was a cross-country runner would drive her and a few friends around northern Indiana and southern Michigan to races. O'Connor has been a runner and racer ever since, running outdoors all year round and taking off only for the occasional short-term injury.
"Running is really an important part of my life," she said. "It's a great stress manager and it also really gives me time to think things through. There's this whole thinking process that goes on at a different level than if you're sitting at your desk. I do a lot of problem-solving — work problems, everything."
O'Connor is proud that her career is integrated in her whole life. Her career and her identity as a lawyer are very important to her, and she considers it an accomplishment that she doesn't have a split home/work personality.
"I don't know if you said, 'Who are you?' I'd say, 'A lawyer,' but certainly 'I am a lawyer' is part of the answer to that," O'Connor said. "What I do and who I am is woven into and through my professional career and my personal life, my family life, and my commitment to my community."
Walsh is a Chicago-area freelance writer.
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