LAW FIRMS COMPETING ON THE “EDGE OF CHAOS”: PRO BONO’S ROLE IN A WINNING COMPETITIVE STRATEGY

Tom Spahn, Stanford Law School

Abstract

My Article takes an interdisciplinary approach to arguing that robust pro bono practices can give law firms a strategic advantage in the modern economy. I use modern economic theories, from game theory to complexity theory, to consider a pro bono practice’s role in responding to both internal and external competitive pressures. This leads to several key insights, such as pro bono’s ability to offset the dead-weight loss incurred when oligopolistic firms merge, its power to cause a paredo improvement to a firm’s position by moving it away from a non-cooperative Nash equilibrium, and the iterative recombination effect that such a practice can give to internal firm dynamics. I think that this Article will provide practitioners with strong arguments for how a pro bono practice can simultaneously benefit their firms, the legal profession, and the public.