Here’s to 2019…and Beyond!

2018 went by in a blink. Time flies when you’re having fun serving great clients! Here’s a short version of our 2018:

• Our clients are amazing, inspiring, and changing the world across industries and sectors.

• We’re helping them in virtually every aspect of their organization and work.

• Our team grew!
  

And here’s a longer version:

Amazing Clients. Inspiring Work.

While we don’t advertise who our clients are, here’s a bit of what they - and we - have been up to:

• Family Office Big Bet - We’ve helped an audaciously motivated family office design and build the next great big bet in cross-sector social impact (philanthropy, private sector, education, and beyond!). Stay tuned for big news on this one in 2019! 
  

• A-List Social Impact - Some of our favorite icons are scaling the work of their foundations and nonprofit interests while also designing, building, and deploying a wider social impact approach across all of their businesses, interests, and platforms.It’s been our joy to support and help them build compliant, well governed, measurable work that can scale and sustain over time!
  

• Private Sector Leaders Changing The World - We’ve supported some of the most influential businesses, brands and brains working to infuse their business models with dynamic social impact approaches.Far beyond CSR, corporate philanthropy, and pro bono alone, these businesses are motivating their teams and their markets by using their business models to do good while doing well. You’re going to see a lot more of this in 2019. We’re thrilled to be helping make it happen! 
  

• Law Firms Too! - That’s right…law firms. Lawyers. No joke. We’re unapologetically bullish that lawyers are the architects of social innovation. Nobody doing anything great is doing (or has ever done) it without lawyers. So we help lawyers and law firms better speak and practice social impact - which motivates and serves their clients and their talent. Look for more law firms to launch their (profit-generating) Social Impact & Innovation practice groups in 2019! Chances are good we helped them! And if your law firm is on this path, let us know...we can help!
  

• Dynamic Nonprofits - We’re supporting some of the most inspiring and rapidly scaling nonprofits working on some of the most important issues of our time. From dynamic and engaged boards, to financing models that support rapid growth, to helping with critically important details on extraordinary work being deployed nationwide and around the world, we provide some of the best guidance and tools to scale effectively. 
  

• Political Dynamos on the Rise - Through our “hidden” offering ofwww.socialimpactpolitics.com we’ve been delighted to provide guidance to some of the most exciting rising stars in public service who focus on positive social impact over partisanship or party politics. This is the future of politics. And we’re excited to be supporting those on the leading edge.
  

In 2018, we’ve seen quite clearly that the “usual suspects” in social impact are changing. The most dynamic leaders are no longer just politicians and philanthropists. We’re seeing with greater clarity than ever before that CEOs, celebrities, newcomers in philanthropy, and an entire generation are engaging as powerful voices for change.

It’s our privilege - and a whole lot of fun - to support them.

We help clients plan big, build simple, and scale for impact.It’s hard work. We make it easier.

Our Most Popular Services in 2018:

• General Counsel - Most growth-stage nonprofits and social enterprises don’t have and can’t afford a general counsel, but wish they could. That’s where we come in!From the Board to program teams and everywhere in between (especially contract review and Human Resources this past year - wow!), we make good governance and compliance real, simple, and seamless.  We don’t replace law firms (and aren’t one), but we reduce the need for one, and make sure the use of them is far more efficient and effective.

• Strategic Counsel - $70,000 PowerPoint “Deliverables” often fail to deliver much at all. So we pick up where most strategic planning leaves off, diving in quickly and with focus to help our clients grow their organizations and their work to achieve specific, actionable, and measurable objectives. 

• Program Design & Development - Our team’s unmatched experience in global philanthropy and on the leading edge of social enterprises results in laser-focused pattern recognition and issue identification. We’ve seen what works and know why it does, so we are uniquely positioned to help design, develop, and pivot programs, partnerships, and initiatives for impact. From landscape mapping, to purposeful partnerships, to impact storytelling and “not your average fundraising and development” guidance, we assist clients in achieving clear targets quickly and effectively.

• Advocacy Strategies - For funders and organizations looking to create positive change through public policy, we’re developing smart, forward-thinking strategies at the state and federal levels to tackle some of the most intractable issues by looking at new ways to build power and winning outcomes.

That’s just where we were busiest in 2018.  There’s a lot more to what we do. Check it out here.

Our Team Grew!

The individual and collective experience and talent of our team is what makes us unique, our services awesome, and our clients better off when we finish our work than when we started.We’re thrilled to have added the following members and their skills to our team this year:

• Zayneb Shaikley- Strategic Counsel; Human Resources; Partnerships; Commercial Transactions

• Joe Ballard- Program Design; Impact Assessment; Strategic Planning; Development Strategy

• Steve Rinehart- Principal Messaging & Communications

• David Horwich - Advocacy Campaigns & Philanthropic and Political Counsel

  
  

We help amazing people change the world.

We’d love to help you, too!

If we aren’t already working together, let’s have a big, bold, fun conversation about what we can do together in 2019! Shoot us an email at contact@beyondadvisers.com

"Beyond Pro Bono, Firms Put Do-Gooders in Top Positions"

Social Impact in the C-Suite of law firms is the future of how law firms do good!

Winston & Strawn recently created the C-Suite position of "Chief CSR Officer." The Legal Intelligencer contacted us for comment, asking whether we expect to see more of this in the law.  Boy, do we!

Check out the article below (especially last section) for more! 

Beyond Pro Bono, Firms Put Do-Gooders in Top Positions

Lizzy McLellan, The Legal Intelligencer

Keeping up with their corporate clients, large law firms have set their eyes on charitable efforts beyond the traditional pro bono commitment. And one firm recently put the leader of those efforts in the C-suite.

In June, Julie Goodman became the first chief corporate social responsibility officer at Winston & Strawn, coordinating the firm's volunteer efforts and charitable giving. In shaping the role, Goodman said, she has looked to corporate clients, rather than other law firms—clients like Bank of America and Motorola. She said she doesn't know of any other law firms with a chief title for corporate social responsibility.

"We really need someone to pull it all together and look at it with more of a strategic point of view," Goodman said. "Law firms need to change like the rest of the business world."

Valentine Brown, partner and pro bono counsel at Duane Morris, agreed. She said positions like Goodman's are "the way of the future."

"Looking at social responsibility the same way that clients look at social responsibility is going to be necessary," Brown said. "It's more effective, and also clients are going to be looking for that."

Many firms, including her own, are already engaged in charitable activities other than pro bono, Brown said. But having a C-level executive overseeing those efforts highlights that commitment.

"Having a person in that role would help them demonstrate what they're already doing and present it in a way that's cohesive," Brown said. "It helps, especially in getting the internal actors in the firm to understand the importance of it. Also, it will help to show clients that it is something the firm takes seriously."

Unlike Brown, Goodman does not oversee pro bono, but she said she expects to work closely with Winston & Strawn's pro bono practice leaders, particularly when the firm has opportunities to volunteer nonlegal help for pro bono clients. She has been with the firm for 28 years, most recently having served in a human relations position before taking on her newest role.

Like any staff position, Goodman said, "there has to be a business driver" for adding a corporate social responsibility executive.

"It's important to clients, which makes it important to us," she said. "Another is to retain and attract the best talent ... our employees want to work for an organization that cares."

Chief by Another Name?

Goodman's title is unique, but many other firms have a person in charge of charitable work, sometimes including pro bono.

Bruce Gilchrist, the global citizenship chair at Hogan Lovells, oversees a team of 24 full-time employees dedicated to the firm's citizenship program. But he is also a full-time corporate and securities partner. The firm's citizenship program includes pro bono, volunteering, diversity and inclusion, sustainability and a matching program for charitable donations.

Firms may not need to dedicate an entire position to CSR leadership, he said. But the person who leads CSR should have authority at the firm.

"We've, I think, consciously wanted it to be partner-driven, and not outsourced , but there's nothing wrong with outsourcing it," he said. "We made a conscious choice that it might need to be senior people to show other people that it's an important part of your experience and work for Hogan Lovells."

There's no one right model, said Reena Glazer, assistant director of the law firm pro bono project at the Pro Bono Institute. It depends on the firm's structure.

"Some of this goes to the professionalization of law firms," Glazer said—the implementation of corporate leadership models throughout the industry. "To the extent that a C-suite position lends gravitas ... that could be a good thing."

But if pro bono is put under a social responsibility umbrella, a CCSRO should not just be an administrative position, she noted.

"In many respects, running a pro bono program at a law firm, you're running the biggest practice group," she said.

Integrating pro bono with community service and charitable giving allows all of those functions to work more effectively, she said. But if executed improperly, it can muddy the waters.

"You want to be sure that the lines don't get blurred ... that you're not mushing in all of your volunteer and pro bono efforts," she said.

A Step Further

Still, even firms with a corporate social responsibility strategy may be behind the times.

"I think it's awesome. I applaud it. And I think it should go further," said Scott Curran of Beyond Advisers, speaking about Winston & Strawn's new position.

He said the rest of the business world has moved past corporate social responsibility into social impact—simply defined as using the business model itself to do good. Unlike pro bono, social impact produces revenue. A former general counsel for the Clinton Foundation, Curran now helps law firms, nonprofits and other businesses find ways to do good while making money.

"I love that the chief CSR officer is becoming real, but I think we have to leapfrog the title and call it the chief social impact officer," Curran said. "I'm here to be a catalyst to tell law firms, 'You're already doing more than that.'"

The interaction between pro bono and social impact is complicated, said Glazer, of the Pro Bono Institute. But social impact is an emerging area, she said, as lawyers seek more ways to use their profession as a vehicle for positive change.

Having a C-suite role to organize those efforts is absolutely necessary, Curran said.

"There's no question in my mind that firms have to prioritize this at the top level," he said. "There are firms that say they want to do this and don't action it. They have to understand that this is not our grandfather's pro bono."

You can read that article by clicking this link. 

The "Good" Pivot: From Pro Bono to Social Impact Law

That's the original title of the piece I wrote for The American Lawyer Magazine's July 2017 issue.  Their team changed the title to "Must Law Firms' Good Deeds Be Done for Free?" Insofar as that question invites curiosity, I am cool with it.

The article is what matters most. And I wrote it following a friendly and constructive Twitter exchange about AmLaw rankings of law firms which a super nice person named Gina joined. In the midst of the exchange, I clicked Gina's profile to discover she is the CEO of The American Lawyer Magazine (which oversees the AmLaw rankings).  For someone who doesn't spend a ton of time on Twitter, it was a solid stroke of luck.

Gina and I had a call. She was completely open to a new perspective and invited me to write an article.  You can read that article by clicking this link. Alternatively, I'm including the full text below for anyone who gets bounced to a sign-in screen they aren't motivated to conquer. 

Must Law Firms' Good Deeds Be Done for Free?

Scott Curran, The American Lawyer

A new model of how law firms do good is emerging, one that delights clients and talent, is profitable, and captures the work that many firms are already doing. This new model—serving social impact clients and achieving social impact through direct firm undertakings—embraces the role of lawyers as the architects of social innovation. At scale, it creates new practices within firms and throughout the profession to serve a growing market of social impact clients and expands the model of how firms "do good."

Pro Bono Important but Limiting

When describing how firms do good, most attorneys understandably cite pro bono practices. Pro bono (providing legal services without charge) has always been the primary way law firms and attorneys serve those with the most urgent unmet legal needs.

But pro bono alone is no longer a sufficient framework, nor metric, to capture the increasingly diverse ways in which firms are evolving to achieve greater social impact. The rest of the private sector has grown beyond traditional corporate social responsibility (using profits to do good) into more integrated social impact approaches that merge the business model with social purpose.

Similarly, law firms are evolving beyond pro bono alone in how they serve social impact clients. The new social impact model for law firms has two primary components: 1) social impact client services; and 2) direct firm undertakings for social good.

Social Impact Client Services

A large market of social impact clients has emerged and, with it, an increasing demand for sophisticated legal support. While inclusive of nonprofits and other traditional pro bono clients, the social impact market consists of increasingly larger, more diverse and better-funded paying clients.

Sophisticated global nonprofits, family offices, social financiers, impact investors, social enterprises and entrepreneurs all comprise the emerging social impact client portfolio. And they are all using lawyers.

Toms Shoes, Warby Parker and Thrive Market are just a few of the growing number of high-profile businesses with an integrated social purpose.

The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, an LLC and not a charity, works to solve social problems through a combination of approaches including making investments in profit-seeking endeavors.

Impact investors and social financiers deploy capital that seeks market rate returns in socially responsible investments.

The world's largest foundations and operating charities with large budgets that fund programs increasingly require sophisticated professional support.

Behind all their work are lawyers. Law firms are happy and excited to have these clients in their book of business. And lawyers throughout their firms' practice groups who service the diverse needs of these clients are excited to do the work.

Serving these paying clients grows opportunities for law firms to achieve the double bottom line of doing good while doing well. But law firm social impact doesn't stop at client services alone.

Law Firms as Social Actors

Beyond the growing market of social impact clients, firms are evolving in how they use their own time, talent and treasure to achieve social impact.

Some firms have large foundations that make grants. Other firms have operating charities that deploy lawyers to support programs working on rule of law and access to justice in developing countries. Some firms undertake community service initiatives involving all firm staff (not just attorneys). The list goes on.

This all makes sense. Doing good is inherent in the profession and motivates many of us personally. And, as our increasingly interdependent and connected world exposes us to global challenges, as growing ranks of millennials seek meaning in their work, and as lawyers discover new ways to deploy their talents to solve challenges, lawyer-led social impact efforts will increase.

New Framework, Measuring What Matters

While this exciting work grows within firms, no universal framework yet exists to meaningfully recognize, organize, market and measure it. Pro bono rankings only capture free attorney time. They don't account for paying social impact clients or for the direct social impact undertakings of firms. This will change with a new social impact metric currently in development by my consulting practice, Beyond Advisers.

Leading firms should be recognized for the work they are already doing. Other firms will welcome the road map that a social impact metric provides to track and measure their existing work. Most importantly, by using a more inclusive social impact metric, we will foster an atmosphere more conducive to greater innovation, collaboration, and even competition in serving social impact clients.

New Markets, Approaches and Opportunities

As social impact work increasingly blurs lines between sectors and blends profits and purpose, new legal entities, financing tools and uniquely sophisticated deal work are emerging. The challenges of this pioneering work require creativity, innovation and extra time from the lawyers who support these endeavors. But the generally high hourly rates of the most in-demand attorneys become a unique challenge. Premium rates assume efficiency and expertise. However, the innovative landscape does not yet know the same efficiencies, and existing expertise must be reconfigured for this new market. And pro bono requests become harder to make or approve for seemingly well-resourced and/or profit-generating endeavors.

There is a fertile middle ground between pro bono and premium rates. Current examples include discounted rates, flat fee pricing, capped fees, alternative billing arrangements, payment tied to success metrics, fixed cost retainers, and per-deal pricing. Firms of all sizes have an opportunity to develop new models to serve social impact clients.

Big clients with big budgets will continue to look to Big Law, which has tremendous ability to innovatively meet social impact demand. But premium rates (even at a discount) and industry rankings prioritizing revenue and profits (and tracking only pro bono efforts) remain a challenge.

Startup clients with smaller budgets can find boutique firms catering to the social impact market. While fast, nimble and affordable, these firms are challenged to scale with their most successful clients whose eventual full-service needs require a hand off to other firms that can pick up where they max out.

Middle market firms have a "Goldilocks" opportunity. Not too big or expensive, not too small or unscalable, but just right with reasonable rates, sophisticated full-service practices, and the ability to speak and practice social impact.

There are clients and opportunities for every sized firm. And the clients and talent of these firms will increasingly prioritize firms that speak and practice social impact. With a framework and metric that more inclusively recognizes and measures social impact, attorneys and their firms will have a greater opportunity to scale their social impact work.

The Bright Future of Social Impact Law

During my 10 years as counsel to a global operating charity with thousands of staff working in more than 30 countries on more than a dozen initiatives, and in my experience advising dozens of organizations doing similar work globally, I have seen firsthand the enthusiasm of outside attorneys to engage in new, dynamic, cross-sector social impact work. Just a few examples of the services that lawyers and law firms that speak and practice social impact provide include:

• Knowing when, where,and how to register and build and manage teams in countries where "on the ground" work occurs. 

• Engaging smart business lawyers to structure multiparty, cross-sector partnerships supporting dynamic global programs. 

• Working with corporate, finance and tax counsel to properly structure program- and mission-related investments. 

• Creating innovative new financing structures and mechanisms to develop social investment policies and streamline deal work for impact investors. 

• Using real estate lawyers to develop land leases in developing nations where commercial farming and supply chain operations help smallholder farmers increase their productivity and access to global markets.

  
  

As an adjunct professor teaching social impact law, and as founder of a social impact consulting practice, I have developed an even fuller view of the opportunity ahead for the law to achieve greater social impact at scale.

I see a bright future where:

• Law schools teach social impact in classrooms and practice it in clinics for the benefit of community social impact organizations and practice-ready graduates alike; 

• Law firms recruit eager and motivated talent with a zeal for serving the double bottom line of doing good while doing well; and 

• Industry rankings measure social impact inclusive of, but not limited to, pro bono alone to capture how the profession comprehensively achieves its highest and best purpose.

  
  

Lawyers are the architects of social innovation. We are already behind so much social impact work. Imagine how the future looks when we put lawyers in front of it!

Scott Curran is the founder of Beyond Advisers, a social impact consulting practice that simplifies professional services for the social sector (www.beyondadvisers.com). He previously served as General Counsel of the Clinton Foundation. He teaches, lectures and speaks with considerable enthusiasm on the topic of lawyers as social innovators. Twitter: @scottmcurran