Jim Baillie

In the months following Hurricane Katrina, while the country pondered images of storm-shattered structures, submerged roads, and communities without power, business bankruptcy lawyer Jim Baillie considered the storm’s effect on the area’s legal infrastructure. What would be the legal needs of a population devastated by Katrina? Would legal service agencies be equipped to handle them?

The Minnesota State Bar Association, of which Baillie is a former president, had similar concerns, and asked him to cochair the Delivery of Legal Services Subcommittee of its Katrina Relief Task Force. Baillie was easily persuaded, and the effort raised $420,000 to support legal aid service programs on the Gulf Coast. “Those are our people,” Baillie says of the legal aid staffers. “They’re doing the ‘good work’ part of our profession, so we’re very sympathetic.”

Baillie’s Katrina relief work is characteristic of his reputation as a leading advocate for pro bono legal services. As a board member and chairperson of the American Bar Association, he helped launch the Pro Bono Challenge, urging large law firms to get involved in pro bono work nationwide. At the national and state bar levels, Baillie has created new delivery methods for pro bono bankruptcy and business law services. In 2004, he helped establish LegalCorps, a Minnesota organization that coordinates free legal assistance for small business entrepreneurs and small nonprofits.

In January, Baillie traveled with other members of the MSBA’s Katrina task force to the Gulf Coast, meeting with the program’s beneficiaries and witnessing the area’s tremendous need for coordinated legal support services. “It was,” he says, “a very affecting experience”—so much so that he and his wife returned to New Orleans in the spring. On his second trip, Baillie met with legal professionals about the region’s impending rise in bankruptcies, and he is working to establish a nationwide delivery system of pro bono bankruptcy services for New Orleans.

Whether in response to a disaster or in the course of everyday practice, “public service is a lawyer’s obligation,” says Baillie. “A lawyer has a real obligation to represent, not only those who can afford to pay, but also those who can’t.”