ether they have provided free legal services during the previous 12 months.
Amended Rule 756(f) also requires reporting the approximate number of hours that an attorney has provided without charge or expectation of a fee, and the amount of any monetary contribution to a legal services agency that assists eligible clients.
The ISBA Assembly adopted several revisions to the proposal in June 2005 by unanimous voice vote. The revisions were drafted by a subcommittee of the ISBA Committee on Supreme Court Rules to address concerns expressed by members after details were announced.
Subcommittee chair Joseph G. Bisceglia, now ISBA president-elect, told the Assembly that the minimal inconvenience of answering questions on the registration form would be balanced by creating a record of how much pro bono work is being done by the bar.
He said this would be helpful to the Supreme Court in seeking additional legal aid funding from the state legislature through the Illinois Equal Justice Foundation.
A key provision of the ISBA proposal was that the court drop its plan to add an unnecessary aspirational disciplinary rule (6.1) on pro bono service, because the statement in the preamble to the Illinois Rules of Professional Conduct is adequate.
This request apparently was agreed to by the court, as was the state bar request that pro bono data collected by the Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission be maintained only in the aggregate, and not retained or used individually for any purpose (amended Rule 766).
The ISBA revisions were adopted in May 2005 by the Board of Governors, with the clear understanding that reporting pro bono service would not lead to mandating pro bono service.
Both the ISBA subcommittee and the court's Special Committee on Pro Bono Publico Legal Service specifically rejected the idea of mandatory pro bono. The ISBA would quickly oppose any such move in the future.
The Illinois Supreme Court Rules Com-mittee held a hearing on Sept. 16, 2005, at which ISBA positions on the pro bono reporting requirement and several other proposals were presented.
The amended Rule 756(f) was described last month by Justice Thomas L. Kilbride as “a critical step in trying to improve the delivery of legal services to unrepresented clients most in need.”
Kilbride added the court's hope that the rule would result in “an increase in volunteer attorneys for those who would otherwise have no legal representation.”
He emphasized that the rule would “give attorneys some flexibility in how they volunteer – whether by directly providing legal services, by making financial contributions to those organizations who provided services, by training other volunteer lawyers, or by some combination.
“The rules allow us a chance to measure for the first time in Illinois the volume of pro bono efforts.”
The original Supreme Court rule proposal had been scheduled for hearing in January 2005, but Justice Kilbride agreed to defer it after then-president Ole Bly Pace III asked for an opportunity to permit full discussion within the ISBA review process.
“The intent is to have our own rules committee review the proposal and to bring suggested changes and clarifications to the Assembly in June,” Pace had told the Assembly in December 2004.
He expressed his appreciation to Kilbride for deferring the proposal. “We will be able to do the Supreme Court, the special committee and the rules committee a much greater service this way,” he said.
The text of the rule may be accessed at the top of the www.isba.org home page, or at www.state.il.us/court/ SupremeCourt/Rules/Art_VII/default.asp.