<Respectfully snipped>
Hi Colonel, A bit of misunderstanding on a couple of fronts. I said on #1263 Not that I've heard of here in Oz. Surely you're not suggesting pro bono in a huge case? I've never heard of that
However when you asked in #1272 What Makes A Lawyer WantTo Take A Case Pro Bono? I took it that you were referring to pro bona cases per se, not the huge ones. I then gave the reasons.
G.bing on the other hand was obviously referring to the large ones.
So to clarify for all, I only retired last year and never followed any overseas trials until OPs. Not only had I not heard of any of the cases referred to by G.Bing, neither had I heard of Jodi Arias until I joined the forum. When Australian trials are on the news, the question of whether it was pro bono would never be mentioned. If G.Bing can show me any large Australian trials where it was done pro bono Id like to see them.
Are we good now?
My list was not only large cases and most pro bono cases are not large. IMO pro bono work is rarely done for publicity more especially in the UK since trials have limited and controlled reporting and none televised. And in the US pro bono advocates for Guantanamo detainees would hardly be doing it for publicity since anything concerning terrorism doesn't score high on the popularity scale, and the Innocence Project's cases are rarely widely publicised and I never heard of one that was televised.
In respect of Australian trials can't say I've seen more than a couple reported here either when a UK person is involved or the odd outback murderer... or was that the same trial! And with the limited reporting here I only know of one in the UK, the McLibel case, where McDonald's sued two 'London Greenpeace' activists (not Greenpeace Int.) for their campaign: "What's wrong with McDonald's", and since Legal Aid does not cover libel they were forced to represent themselves albeit with substantial pro bono input. It's a fantastic David and Goliath case which lasted some 10 years, and polls showed McDonald's received more negative publicity from the case than they did from the few pamphlets distributed by the campaign, and to boot it cost McD's some £2m or more and the activists only £30k. McD's did win on some counts and were awarded by the High Court £60k but the activists appealed and the Court of Appeal reduced the damages to £40k. The activists then took the UK government to the ECHR and were awarded £57k for the government's failure to protect the public right to a fair trial and to criticise the practices of large corporations.
