Working withWorking withPro Bono ClientsPro Bono Clients

Martha Delaney, Esq.

Pro bono workPro bono work

• Why do you do pro bono work?• Why it is important?• What is at stake?

2

Some challenges of bono workSome challenges of bono work

• What are the top three challenges you have faced or think you might face working with pro bono clients?

OR• What are three situations about which you

would like to learn some strategies today?

3

Typical types of challengesTypical types of challenges

1. Cross cultural relationship (need to be explicit)

2. Overcome our bias against what’s different

3. Communication styles/comfort/additional steps

4. Establishing trust

5. Engaging in the legal system

6. Keeping in touch

7. Appointments

8. Interpreters4

Where we’re startingWhere we’re starting

• Looking at poverty, not other factors

• Sources for this presentation

• Generalizations

• Cross cultural relationship

5

Where we’re going nextWhere we’re going next

As the professionals, we need to:

•Know we’re in a cross cultural relationship

•See and suspend human tendency to judge (or quality may be compromised)

•Learn enough about the other culture to know how to be respectful, accommodating, and explicit

•Proactively sidestep common communication barriers

•Have tools to deal with specific challenges

6

• What would you do with some extra money?

• What would you say if a friend asked you to lend him some money?

• If you had a doctor’s appointment and your friend called you with car trouble, what would you do?

• If you had a dog who had twicebitten a guest of yours, wouldyou have the dog put down?

7

Differences in Driving ForcesDifferences in Driving Forces

Class Driving Forces

Wealth Financial, political, social connections

Middle Class Work, achievement, material security

Poverty Survival, relationships, entertainment

8

• What would you do with some extra money?

• What would you say if a friend asked you to lend him some money?

• If you had a doctor’s appointment and your friend called you with car trouble, what would you do?

• If you had a dog who had twicebitten a guest of yours, wouldyou have the dog put down?

9

Cross-cultural interactionCross-cultural interaction

10