Lawyers Rock! Nonprofit helps lawyers raise the roof for charity
Earlier this year, some 500 people crammed into Los Angeles’ famed Whisky a Go Go to hear bands playing classic rock and pop covers. The club wasn’t hosting the hot band of the summer or even a celebrity band. Rather, it was hosting seven lawyer bands with names like Privileged Communications and Willful Misconduct.
The event was produced by Law Rocks, a nonprofit that hosts legal industry “battles of the bands” to raise money for the law firms’ designated charities. In LA, winner DLA Piper’s Run DLA nabbed $44,000 for the Los Angeles Regional Food Bank. The winner was determined by a combination of fundraising and judge and audience voting.
Started in 2009 in London, Law Rocks produced its first U.S. show last year, according to organizers Ted Scott, an engineer at Secretariat International, and Brandt Mori, senior counsel at SBE Entertainment Group. In June, at Law Rocks’ first San Francisco concert, bands from firms like Winston & Strawn and Cooley played to 350 guests and raised funds for organizations including the Cooperative Restraining Order Clinic and the Justice & Diversity Center of the Bar Association of San Francisco.
Law Rocks is exploring gigs in Chicago, Seattle, New York and other communities with solid legal and music industries. “I want to be raising $1 million in the next couple of years,” Mori says.
While band rehearsals can pull lawyers away from their billable hours in the months leading up to a show, Mori says the benefit is tangible to the lawyers and the firms’ charities. “It’s easy to get caught up in work and billables. This pulls people outside of that. It’s a totally unique experience, so different from what they’re dealing with day to day.”
Run DLA’s encore set at Law Rocks:
Exposition Deposition at Law Rocks:
