One of the topics that we discussed in this week's class was constructing a framework to portray how our solution serves customers. There are a number of facets to the social enterprise idea that my partner and I have been working on - we first and foremost serve students, but then also universities and businesses. One subset of our base is law firms. Looking into the needs of law firms is our most recent endeavor, and I am using the blog this week to explore my conception of a problem we are trying to address: overall lower pro bono hours in law firms.
My understanding is the following:
- the percentage of free legal hours - pro bono work - has declined precipitously since 2009
- as the economy has increased poverty levels, pro bono work is needed more than ever
- most pro bono work is done by younger lawyers, but when they are short-staffed, firms place priority on paid work
- though lawyers are salaried, the cost to the firm of hours spent on pro bono work is not zero
- fewer corporations are willing to pay young attorneys to learn on the job...pro bono work can fill this training void [1]
Our big question of the week will be: can law students assist with this problem? We have a couple of ideas on how this would be possible. Now it will be interesting to see what our customer development interviews tell us... whether our conception of the problem is accurate and whether our solution is viable.
[1]http://management.fortune.cnn.com/2011/11/28/big-law-pro-bono-cuts/
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