ET AL. < Noteworthy lished pro bono organizations such as the Community Tax Law Project and the Northern Virginia Pro Bono Law Center, as well as law firm–sponsored programs, law school–sponsored programs, faith-based initiatives, and other specialty niche programs. In the spring of 2013, we contacted each of these organizations and provided them with a link to an online survey designed to solicit basic data on their pro bono programs: the number of pro bono cases concluded in the last year, by region, if available; the number of participating pro bono attor-neys; and the number of hours of legal services donated by these attorneys in the cases they concluded. If the organi-zations did not have exact numbers, we asked that they provide us with their best estimates. We received responses from twenty-four of the organizations. The eight organizations that did not respond to the survey appeared either to be defunct or not currently sponsoring a pro bono program. Some responding organiza-tions indicated they did not actually have a pro bono program; others indi-cated that they collaborated with a legal aid program or another organization, meaning that their data would be redun-dant. When we weeded these out, we had fourteen organizations responding to our survey that operated their own pro bono program independently of a legal aid program. Two of these organizations indicated that they did not keep track of the data we requested: they did not know how many pro bono cases were concluded, how many attorneys assisted, or how many hours they donated. The remaining twelve organizations were able to provide at least some of the data we were seeking, although a majority of them indicated they were providing rough estimates, not actual counts. Compiling this data, we found that there is a significant amount of pro bono work being undertaken through a number of these independent pro bono organizations. Just over 1,800 cases were reported to have been concluded over the previous year by pro bono attorneys www.vsb.org volunteering through the independent pro bono organizations (compared to the 3,561 cases handled by pro bono attorneys volunteering through legal aid–sponsored pro bono programs). The majority of these pro bono cases were in northern and central Virginia. The largest single category of legal work being undertaken by non-legal-aid-sponsored pro bono programs was immigration law. The independent pro bono programs reported that approxi-mately 1,100 attorneys assisted over the last year, donating about 17,500 hours. A Pro Bono Gap? We then combined the data from the legal aid–sponsored pro bono pro-grams and the independent pro bono programs. We found that 2,093 Virginia lawyers participating in orga-nized pro bono programs concluded a total of 5,363 pro bono cases over the previous year, donating 36,698 hours of legal services. This suggests that less than 9 percent of Virginia’s active lawyers rendered any pro bono legal services through an organized pro bono pro-gram, whether sponsored by a legal aid society or by another organization. Remember, we had determined that Rule 6.1 established an aspirational bench-mark of 939,120 hours of pro bono legal services performed annually by the 23,478 attorneys actively practicing within Virginia. Comparing the aspira-tional goal set by Rule 6.1 with the best data we were able to compile for pro bono work performed through orga-nized pro bono programs, we found that, as a statewide community, we are performing less than one-twenty-fifth of the pro bono work that the rule expects of us — 3.9 percent, to be precise. The graph below dramatically depicts the Pro Bono Gap that we found. Having made this dramatic point, we acknowledge that there is undoubt-edly a great deal of pro bono work being undertaken by Virginia’s lawyers on an ad hoc basis, rather than through any organized pro bono program. Lawyers certainly render pro bono legal services to needy folks referred to them through their churches, synagogues, and other faith groups, by friends and neighbors, from colleagues, or simply when a prospective client with a compelling story appears at their office lacking the ability to pay for their services. Unfortunately, we have no mecha-nism in place for tracking the amount of VIRGINIA'S PRO BONO GAP 1000000 900000 800000 700000 600000 500000 400000 300000 200000 100000 0 Potential pro bono hours if Rule Actual pro bono hours donated 6.1's goal was met annually through Legal Aid Pro Bono programs Actual pro bono hours donated through Independent pro bono programs Total Potential Pro Bono Hours Annually under Rule 6.1 vs. Actual Pro Bono Hours Reported by Virginia Legal Aid and Independent Pro Bono Programs Vol. 62 | February 2014 | VIRGINIA LAWYER 47