If good help is hard to find, good free legal help is almost impossible, particularly if you are a nonprofit organization. However, thanks to Westchester, New York-based Pro Bono Partnership, a small group of dedicated nonprofit lawyers working with hundreds of volunteers - attorneys from law firms and leading corporations, including GE Capital - hundreds of deserving nonprofit agencies in Westchester and Fairfield counties and northern New Jersey are finally receiving the legal aid they so desperately need - gratis.

On a Mission

A tax-exempt public charity, Pro Bono Partnership's mission is to provide free business legal assistance to community-based nonprofit organizations serving the poor and disadvantaged populations in the aforementioned communities, primarily in the areas of health and human services, affordable housing, and neighborhood revitalization.

Legal services include the drafting and filing of incorporation documents, providing employment and corporate governance counseling services, offering capital finance assistance, and negotiating leases - and are all provided free of charge by a cadre of volunteer legal experts.

To date, over a dozen attorneys with GE Capital have worked with the Partnership, providing invaluable legal assistance to local charities - such as contract and bylaw reviews, lease negotiations, and capital finance assistance. And both GE Capital and the Partnership are hoping to continue and expand the relationship.

Tales From the Front: Coming Back for More

"CLASP Homes [which provides homes, professional services, and opportunities for people with mental retardation and related disabilities] has been receiving much needed services from the Pro Bono Partnership since May of 1998," said Patty Richards, director of quality assurance at CLASP Homes, Inc. "Valerie Chimblo of GE Card Services reviewed and rewrote two leases and related documents for us. She was very helpful, very quick, and very nice. The lawyers we have worked with have been invaluable. The Pro Bono Partnership is one of our greatest finds."

Chimblo, Counsel, GE Capital Corporate Consumer Relations, has actually done a lot of work with the Partnership - providing legal assistance to Stamford CARES (the Coalition for AIDS Resources, Education, and Services) and the Institute for Life Coping Skills (an agency which helps clients gain valuable career skills) in addition to CLASP Homes.

Chimblo first heard about the Partnership at a breakfast arranged by Nancy Barton, senior vice president/general counsel of GE Capital. "They passed around a list. I put my name down. And I got a phone call from the Pro Bono Partnership soon after," she recalls. "Then they send you a list of potential situations, and you basically pick off of the list, choosing something that you either are interested in or had done sometime in your career."

For Chimblo that meant reviewing real estate contracts and agreements and providing assistance with a consultant agreement. After Chimblo told the Partnership which group she was interested in assisting, they set up a meeting for everyone involved. As is typical with most first client-volunteer meetings, the client describes what it does and what its needs are, the volunteer asks some questions, and if she feels comfortable taking on the assignment, leaves with the documents and gets to work - keeping the Partnership apprised of her progress.

That's one of the nice things about the Pro Bono Partnership. You can walk away from an assignment at any time - no pressure, no hard feelings. Almost no one does.

It also doesn't require an exorbitant amount of time - typically about 20 hours per project (though, depending on the scope of the project and the volunteer's availability, that figure can range from 5 hours to over 100 hours). "You can choose something more time-consuming if you have a lot of time, or you can choose something that's not going to take a lot of time," explains Chimblo. "And there are usually no deadlines, which is nice. You just figure out how much time you can give and how long you think it will take."

Says Chimblo of her experiences with the Partnership and its clients: "I think it's great to learn a little bit more about what's going in the community - and it's been a great opportunity for me. To do these little pro bono jobs, where you get to learn a about something that maybe you haven't been exposed to as much as you may have liked, and also being able to volunteer in a skillset that you have, is great. I mean, it's great to go and paint a building that needs painting. And I've done stuff like that too. But I just think that the reward of being able to provide legal services, which are very expensive, to organizations that can't really afford them is worth it."

Helping to Put Food on the Table

Although he now works for GE Rail Car in Chicago, general counsel Chip Champagne has fond memories of his work with the Pro Bono Partnership - and they of him.

In a letter to the Partnership, Christina Rohatynskyj, the Executive Director of Food-PATCH, the Westchester County food bank, wrote:

"Thank you for the recent work done for Food-PATCH by the Pro Bono Partnership. The attorney you assigned to us, Chip Champagne, Jr., from GE Capital Services did an outstanding job. He completed the work in a timely manner. He clearly devoted a great deal of quality time to our request because he was able to make excellent recommendations from the minutest detail to important contractual recommendations, and at my request, educating me on legal concepts. The Pro Bono Partnership's assistance to Food-PATCH may seem far removed from hungry women, children and men of Westchester County. In fact, your help will have a deep and direct impact on their lives by enhancing our ability to forge better relationships with food donors and the distribution of network of food pantries, soup kitchens, and other anti-hunger programs in Westchester."

For Champagne (who had also attended one of Nancy Barton's Pro Bono Partnership breakfasts), reviewing some contracts for the food bank just seemed the right thing to do - and didn't require a whole lot of time. He simply sat down with a representative from Food-PATCH and the Partnership at the Partnership's headquarters, reviewed the contracts, and then over the course of a few phone calls and visits to Food- PATCH's offices completed the contract review - and in the process educated the Food-PATCH about the contract.

A very positive experience for everyone involved, when asked if he would work for the Partnership again Champagne doesn't hesitate: "Absolutely. It's a very worthwhile cause." Unfortunately, the organization does not have a Chicago chapteryet.

Boldly Going Where no Volunteer Had Gone

It was during one of of Nancy Barton's breakfasts (back in the summer of 1999) that Jane Alpert, regional counsel for GE Capital Real Estate - and the daughter of two social workers - also hooked up with Rick Hobish and the Pro Bono Partnership.

"One of the things that Commercial Real Estate does is tax credit/affordable housing transactions, where the financing arranged for a renovation project is done through a special program where the government gives you tax credits for building the affordable housing," explains Alpert. So it seemed only natural to her to use her expertise in tax-credit financing and affordable housing to help one of Pro Bono's clients, the Tarrytown YMCA.

When she took on the project, it looked as though the Y - which had a very knowledgeable board of directors, including a former attorney for IBM and several people familiar with tax credit financing - was very close to getting the financing it needed. Then the project hit a few snags.

"Unfortunately, the project turned out to be a little larger than we thought, because they were putting together HUD grants and state grants and federal grants. And it was very difficult to make all of the grant money work together," explains Alpert. "But eventually [thanks to the pro bono help of outside law firm Paul, Hastings, Janofsky & Walker and the accounting firm they recruited] the monies came through, and the renovation for the building started."

"She's my hero," says Pro Bono Partnership's executive director Rick Hobish speaking of Alpert's work for the Y - which won her Pro Bono's 1999 Volunteer of the Year Award. A modest person who doesn't like to call attention to herself, Alpert would no doubt blush at the reference - just as she is quick to explain that the award really belonged to all the lawyers and accountants working on the project, not just her.

Yet without Alpert's pro bono assistance says Leonard D. Andrew, the retired IBM attorney and president of the Tarrytown YMCA, "the legal and accounting fees could have approached $250,000, and may have made the 48-room renovation project not financially viable."

For Alpert, "What made you feel good ultimately is that it put the renovation of that men's residence on track for renovation, and it permitted the Y to continue to give services to the community and you really wanted them to succeed."

Alpert gained a lot professionally too. "At the end of the project, I knew a lot more about affordable housing transactions than I had known before," she says.

The Importance of Giving Back to the Community

"For me this has been an incredible experience," says Pro Bono Partnership's Hobish. "Corporate America has risen to the challenge, exceeding our expectations in every respect. I'm very proud of our accomplishments so far, including the quality legal services we've provided to over 250 clients on more than 500 matters - and the more than 400 volunteers we've recruited, the majority of which come from in-house legal departments. Our volunteers are down-to-earth, good folks who want to figure out a way to help within the constraints of their demanding jobs. Hopefully, the Partnership is providing them with that vehicle."

Finding the right vehicle for GE attorneys to give back to the communities they live in is precisely why Nancy Barton got involved with the Partnership in the first place, inviting Hobish to speak at several breakfasts.

"The challenge for inside counsel in fulfilling their public service commitment is to find the right fit between their unique qualifications - corporate law, transactions, tax, real estate, and other business-oriented specialties - and the needs of the local community," she explains. "The Pro Bono Partnership provides a vital service in matching the skills of corporate lawyers with not-for-profit organizations that need our specialized help. And it really makes us feel good to give something back to the organizations helping communities where we work and live."

Interested in learning more about or volunteering for Pro Bono Partnership? Visit their Web site at http://www.probonopartnership.com/, or call their office, 914-328-0674.