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McDonald’s and Pro Bono

The National Law Journal
Ginny LaRoe
May 11, 2015

“When Pauline Levy interviewed with McDonald’s Corp.’s legal department in 1997, she asked about its pro bono efforts. Individual attorneys might have done some work here or there, she learned, but nothing formal was in place.

“Levy was passionate about ­charity work after seeing the impact it had on people’s lives when she was a young attorney in private practice, and she was determined to start a program at her new in-house job. By 2000, she had organized the company’s first project. And for the past 15 years, she has nurtured the program along, helping it grow to a model for corporate legal departments in the Chicago area and beyond.

“As Bob Glaves of The Chicago Bar Foundation puts it, “If everyone could have a ‘Pauline.’ ” Every department needs someone to be the energizer, a catalyst, he said. In 2014, the legal department spent about 750 hours on pro bono work, with U.S.-based lawyers’ participation exceeding 50 percent, as it consistently has every year for the past decade, a national benchmark for the Corporate Pro Bono Challenge, to which McDonald’s is a ­signatory.”

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