I’m delighted to be part of your Pro Bono Awards program.

And I congratulate you award winners on your outstanding public service performances.

Thomas Jefferson once observed that lawyers and the Republic’s fledgling Congress would not be an ideal match.

He said, “it ought not to be expected that 150 lawyers should do business together.”

More than two centuries later, some would not disagree with that observation.

As an advocacy profession, we have aroused some negative passions over the years.

Shakespeare wanted to do us bodily harm.

The recent law firm TV sitcom – Ally McBeal – portrayed us as socially dysfunctional.

And of course, we are the butt of the “lawyer joke” whose punch-line often has us placed below the surface of earth or ocean.

But on this occasion, and with minimal fanfare, we celebrate the selfless toil toward the common good by 55 legal professionals from a single firm.

How in the world could that happen?

I believe there are two reasons.

One, you are well-intentioned, well-adjusted people who happen to enjoy practicing law.

And two, you reflect the culture of your organization.

In fact, I believe our two employers have a great deal in common when it comes to culture.

That’s what I want to explore with you during the next few minutes.

Let’s start with our respective beginnings.

The seeds of each culture were planted and cultivated by our founders.

History has shown that’s significant.

Bill Sutherland and Ed Tuttle launched your firm in 1924.

From the beginning, they achieved a lot.

Yet, they were humble and self-effacing.

Among their many accomplishments was shaping civil liberties law for indigent defendants.

The firm’s landmark appeal in Johnson versus Zerbst in 1938 established a defendant’s constitutional right to legal counsel in federal court.

Today, that pro bono tradition continues in many forms.

Just last month, Bert Adams led more than 800 members of Atlanta’s legal community for a day of hard work to revitalize the Cabbagetown and Reynoldstown neighborhoods on behalf of Hands On Atlanta.

Many of you took part.

And many of you and your firm have generously supported breast cancer research and prevention, the March of Dimes, and the United Way, among other important community service programs.

In a similar fashion, UPS was founded in 1907 by a humble, and self-effacing individual named Jim Casey.

From the beginning, Jim’s philosophy was that to endure, a business depended on its reputation.

That meant earning the trust of customers, employees, and the communities it serves.

In 1968, before the word diversity had entered our vocabularies, Jim and UPS introduced one of the unique community and diversity pro bono programs in Corporate America.

It’s called the Community Internship Program.

And it’s still going strong 36 years later.

One of our attorneys, Jeff Firestone, is one of the 50 managers participating this year.

If you are selected to be a CIP intern, you are considered to be a top performer in a mid-level management position, and to have high advancement potential.

Many of the CIP participants lead a large number of employees in our district and package sorting hub operations.

The interns leave their jobs behind for an entire month.

They travel to one of four rural and urban communities afflicted with poverty, homelessness, spousal abuse, drugs, crime, and gang warfare.

Once there, the interns live and eat on-site in accommodations you could only describe as spartan, just the basics, close to the areas where they work.

The interns immerse themselves in community projects, day and night, for the entire month.

Those projects can involve tutoring pre-school Head Start children, orphans, or kids who have AIDS.

They may teach resume skills to prisoners or at-risk teens, visit nursing homes and mental health facilities, work in soup kitchens, attach an outdoor shower onto a home, or sometimes just tackle the crisis of the moment.

We invest some US$10,000 per intern in this program.

It pays off many times over.

Walking in the other guy’s shoes changes perspectives.

Managers tend to look at employee matters in a less rigid way.

They tend to listen with more empathy.

CIP is symbolic of a UPS-wide cultural legacy that is much like yours.

It encourages hands-on, community volunteerism across the organization.

So how important is this to a business’s well being?

We believe nurturing a culture that is customer, employee, and community-centric helps shape the way we think, feel, and act in the best sense.

It swings the needle from self-interest toward the common good.

I can tell you we didn’t go forward with our Initial Public Offering in late 1999 until we determined it would not risk a negative impact on the culture we had built over decades.

Of course, in recent years we’ve seen the downside when organizations with less than strong cultures break down.

In our mind, our culture is our reputation.

And our reputation is our brand.

As a recent Harris Poll reported, corporate reputation was cited by 78 percent of respondents as very important to the stature of 8 of the top 10 business brands.

So it’s no accident that organizations like UPS and Sutherland Asbill & Brennan have endured and thrived for 98 and 80 years respectively.

Our cultures, set in motion by our founders, have played pivotal roles.

If your summer associates in the audience would permit me one word of advice, I would urge you to put culture at the top of your priority list when it comes to researching and choosing a firm or organization to begin your legal careers.

That’s the match, if well made that will yield the most career satisfaction.

Now having talked about our legacies, there’s one more important thing I’d like to add.

And that is there’s a lot more we each can and should do ahead.

And there’s more we can do together.

One area is pro bono legal work.

It’s an area we look forward to developing creative approaches with you and the UPS legal team to achieve.

We’re convinced that sustaining our own success in a rapidly transforming global economy must involve a public service mindset.

It will involve taking an active role in the social and environmental well being of the communities we serve around the world.

To that end, last November we published our first sustainability blueprint to key stakeholders.

This Sustainability Report serves as a report card on how we’re doing in achieving our three-pronged – economic, environmental, and social objectives.

We fully admit it’s a work in progress.

We don’t have all the answers.

And we’ve cited many areas where we’ll strive for improvement.

The important thing is it gives us a roadmap to achieve our vision of business leadership in a synchronized global economy.

Finally, I want to conclude my remarks as I began, by congratulating all of you pro bono award recipients.

You are part of a proud and honorable tradition.

Your work helps move that tradition forward for your firm’s and your own benefit.

I hope you’ll never underestimate the importance of this aspect of your career work.

It widens your perspective.

It makes you a better counselor.

And even that famous legal critic William Shakespeare allowed that “good counselors lack no clients.”

We at UPS look forward to working with you to continue to support our communities in the future.

Thank you for your attention and your fine work.