Legal Advice
The legal system of the United States is an essential component in the country's overall ability to govern effectively and provide decent standards of legal help for guaranteeing the quality of life in the country, but it can also prove highly, even prohibitively difficult for the "average" citizen to navigate successfully, particularly without the benefit of the kind of informed legal advice that can be most readily secured only for a hefty price tag. A particularly difficult issue in regard to the functioning of the United States legal system exists in the form of the regrettable fact that often those people most in need of the services of professional legal help after a brush with criminal or civil law are those least well equipped to secure it through their own financial means. Though the United States legal system is replete with individuals trained for the purpose of providing legal advice to others in need, the market nature of the county's legal help environment ensures that such services are more difficult for people of limited financial means to access. For this reason, it is a helpful feature of the country's legal culture to have the concept of "pro bono," which encourages the dispensing of free legal advice.
The phrase "pro bono" is derived from the lengthier Latin "pro bono publico," meaning "for the public good." The idea that legal professionals who have enjoyed the benefits of an education at law schools and now possess the professional advantages associated with holding a law degree should feel obligated to dispense legal help to those in need in navigating the country's legal system is promoted for the purpose of upholding the general texture of life throughout the country through a commitment to social justice. Though commonly known to people who have been educating in the providing of legal advice through the United States' legal system, it is not encouraged at equivalent rates throughout the whole of the country's legal culture. For instance, the American Bar Association (ABA) has chosen to promote the principle that lawyers practicing in the United States should give out legal advice free of charge at a rate of fifty hours per year. Other organizations for American legal professions have different recommendations, for instance, with the New York State Bar Association providing a far less robust imperative for rates of "pro bono" work, which by their lights need only be proffered only at a quantity of twenty hours annually. Individuals who anticipate that they may be or find that they are requiring free legal help to deal with a pressing issue of criminal charges or civil litigation should be aware of the rates at which services can be accessed in their area, and thus willing to shop around for legal advice possibilities. They should also be aware of the studies conducted by the law student activist organization Building a Better Legal Network, which found that most large and prominent law firms fall behind their responsibilities for free legal help.