PRO BONO
Pro Bono Publico (often shortened to "Pro Bono") is a Latin phrase that means "for the public good", usually to refer to professional work undertaken voluntarily and without payment or at a reduced fee as a public service for people who cannot afford such professional services. For lawyers, pro bono work usually means the provision of free legal services.
At Beacon, we believe that it is a privilege to be able to practise law and see it as our social responsibility to help the less privileged with our legal skills. We recognise that we are a small law firm with limited resources, yet we truly believe we can make a genuine difference for the public good. We believe that we must concentrate on quality and not quantity. While we do want to help as many people as possible, we are painfully aware that if we take on too many cases, we would not be able to do our best for everyone as there are limits to human endurance and Father Time lays the same impartial constraints on all of us.
Thus, we concentrate on doing all that we can, for whoever we can, whenever we can; but always mindful that if we take on too many cases, it would prevent us from doing 'all that we can' for the people we have undertaken to help. Afterall, our goal is to bring about access to justice, not just access to lawyers. As we have limited resources, in order to ensure that pro bono services are offered to only genuinely needy clients who merit such services, we only work with our trusted Pro Bono Partners, who often act as 'clearing houses' and who refer such clients to us.
We do hope that by our little contribution to the pro bono cause, we would help to spread the spirit of pro bono in the legal profession, especially among the younger lawyers and the future generations of lawyers. As such, we periodically welcome law students (and at times pre-law students) to intern with us so that the seeds of the pro bono spirit are sown early, even before they start their legal careers.
