Networked Knowledge - Media Report

[This edited version of the report has been prepared by Dr Robert N Moles]

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On 20 June 2008 Frances Gibb in The Australian reported “Top UK firm takes a punt on pro bono”.

He said think of Clifford Chance and think of the world's largest law firm, pound stg. 1 million-a-year partners and revenue last year of pound stg. 1.3 billion ($2.7 billion). But these days the magic circle giant rings less obvious bells with, for instance, death-row cases and other pro bono work, public inquiries and social welfare. The firm will be advising the tribunal of inquiry opening on July 7 and chaired by Lord Cullen, the Scottish judge, into the position of the Chief Justice of Gibraltar, Derek Schofield, presently suspended from office. Heading the legal team is Michael Smyth.  He has been described as the acceptable face of corporate law or the social conscience of the City law firms. Either way, Mr Smyth, 51, enjoys an enviable position as head of public policy at Clifford Chance, with power to deploy some of its high earnings to the wider community.  

That lucky position is not lost on him. A commercial litigator with a background in media, public law and inquiries, he was the obvious choice for the post when Richard Thomas left in 2002 to become the Information Commissioner. "I have been lucky in that I was early into the public law space ... and its one I've been very happy to stay in. But like any lawyer, I'd be the first to admit I owe a lot to luck and serendipity." His client workload spans a mix of media work, crisis management for large corporations whose work, he says, is under scrutiny and likely to become more intense, one-off public inquiries and regulatory and human rights work. What gives the job its edge is that he has a roving brief in the firm as a partner at large, advising on public policy, pro bono and on political affairs that affect the firm.

Others are in the field but Mr Smyth says his portfolio is not replicated exactly - probably due to his personality. He accepts that he is entrepreneurial, seeking out his opportunities in what some might see as an un-lawyerly way, using a degree of opportunism that might otherwise be described as hard work. It has paid off. Clifford Chance has appointed a full-time pro-bono lawyer, Tom Dunn, to manage what is now a pro-bono practice. The value of the firm's pro-bono work in 2006-07 was more than pound stg. 10 million, with 54 per cent of lawyers taking part. On top of this, four lawyers are seconded each year to Liberty, the human rights group, and 16 to Law for All, Britain's largest not-for-profit law firm that operates from London and East Anglia. "Several hundred of our lawyers attend and support law clinics in deprived parts of London each week - a huge logistical undertaking."

This is a model for the big law firms, Mr Smyth believes: providing social welfare law where needed. But he detects a worrying trend, in pro bono, towards "trophy work", international assignments that may win awards but do not mean the provision of free legal services to poor people. He see the firm's first duty as providing a legal resource to local communities at a time when that provision is increasingly threadbare. Public policy, in Mr Smyth's case, also means human rights. He identified early the nexus of human rights laws with business at a time when that struck corporate lawyers as strange, he says. "Every lawyer needs to know about it."

It led to his book: Business and the Human Rights Act 2000. "I dont see that you can be an M&A partner at a magic circle firm and not know about the fair trial aspects of the European Convention on Human Rights or about the right to property in Article 1, Protocol 1. He won the first declaration of incompatibly under the Human Rights Act in a commercial credit case. Mr Smyth is a networker, with contacts across political parties, big business and the profession. "Geoffrey Howe (former Conservative chancellor under Thatcher), former managing partner of the firm, led the way in showing clients our expertise in how to handle that part of life where law and business bump up against politics and government," he says.

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