Lucy Helm not only enjoys an important post in the coffee business; she also is a leader in the business of “giving back to people through pro bono.” Senior vice president and deputy general counsel for Starbucks Coffee Company’s Law & Corporate Affairs Department, Helm steers Starbucks’ pro bono committee.
“As legal professionals, we have a heightened duty to give back to the community,” said Helm, who has helped to create a broad and diverse pro bono program serving indigent and low-income people.
Since graduating from the University of Louisville Louis D. Brandeis School of Law 25 years ago, Helm has had a passion for helping people — first working as an advocacy director at the Center for Accessible Living, a Louisville nonprofit dedicated to helping disabled persons, and later moving into private practice at Riddell Williams in Seattle, a firm “with a deep commitment to public service.”
“I did a lot of pro bono work while I was at Riddell Williams,” Helm said. “I loved that firm and my partners there. I volunteered as a cooperating attorney for the ACLU of Washington — primarily on students’ rights cases — and the firm offered numerous opportunities to engage in other interesting civic and social justice matters.” In fact, her work with the ACLU led to a board position for several years.
Helm also has a passion for college basketball — the Louisville Cardinals, not the Kentucky Wildcats — and the Kentucky Derby. “Every year at Riddell, I hosted a Derby Eve happy hour for all the attorneys, where I served mint juleps,” she said. “I brought the tradition to the Starbucks law department, but instead of the juleps we have a festive hat contest and serve Kentucky Derby pie.”
Helm was enjoying a career as a commercial trial lawyer when the opportunity to join Starbucks perked up. A non-negotiable term of employment was an environment that supported her dedication to giving back to people in the community. “I wanted to keep doing pro bono work at Starbucks,” she said. So, Helm did what lawyers are trained to do first: due diligence.
“I was lucky enough to know many folks in the Starbucks law department and get their perspective on pro bono and public service as it was viewed by the company,” she said. “It was always positive. I wanted to work for a place that supported strong involvement in the community and helped people that needed access to justice.” Starbucks fit the bill.
“Starbucks’ dedication to the community really drew me to the company when I came here eight years ago,” said Helm, who now heads the global business team. “Embedded in the company’s history and fabric is giving back to the community. If you look at Starbucks’ mission statement and guiding principles, it is clear how deeply committed the company is to its partners (employees), customers, and the community.”
Indeed, over the years, the company has been recognized as a corporate pro bono leader. “Starbucks’ dedication to pro bono exceeds just words,” said Helm. “[The company] actually contributes to the community through actions.”
Starbucks’ Law Depart-ment takes its responsibility to the communities it serves seriously. Its Community Outreach Committee works on community service initiatives, such as rebuilding area parks, and sponsors fundraisers for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation and breast cancer research, as well as other projects.
Though she is the executive sponsor of the Pro Bono Committee, Helm is not the straw that stirs the drink. She helps coordinate informational sessions, sponsor in-house training and encourage program participation. But the real stars are the lawyers, legal assistants and staffers who devote their time. “Our department has a fantastic, actively engaged committee working on all of these initiatives,” Helm said. The goal “is to give partners avenues to give back to the community. Providing resources and programs to facilitate people’s natural desires to give back to the community is important to me.”
So is her own community service. Helm chairs the Board of Directors of Washington YMCA Youth & Government, which helps young people experience democracy in action through the Youth Legislature and Mock Trial programs, and volunteers with Parkview Services, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization in Seattle that supports persons with disabilities.
When Helm started at Starbucks in 1999, many people were already working on individual pro bono projects. “I didn’t invent the notion of pro bono at Starbucks,” she said. “What I saw was a lot of people trying their hardest to fit pro bono work into their busy schedules, but not getting to do it as often as they would like.
“It is just a bit more difficult to find the time in an in-house environment because the clients live with you in your office, the meetings are more prevalent and, to top it off, we are away from the downtown service providers and courthouses where pro bono opportunities are more available or easier to access. So my aim was to make it easier, to bring broader opportunities into the department, particularly things that we could do as a team. That’s been working.”
Looking for a project that the whole law department could collaborate on to foster teamwork, Starbucks early on hooked up with Merf Ehman, director of KCBA’s Housing Justice Project (HJP), which provides pro bono legal services to low-income tenants facing eviction hearings in King County Superior Court. It was a perfect blend.
Starbucks became the first corporate law department in Washington to participate in HJP. Helm handled one of the first HJP matters assigned to Starbucks, and in 2002, Starbucks committed to provide a rotating group of two lawyers and two support staff on alternate Tuesdays at the Seattle HJP. Ehman credited Helm for her proactive attitude and “great enthusiasm” for encouraging other Starbucks attorneys to volunteer.
“Lucy is wonderful and energetic,” Ehman said. “She is compassionate and professional with all of her pro bono clients and terrific to work with. She is never daunted by having to think quickly on her feet and prepare a case in just a few minutes.”
“I particularly remember Lucy coming to the courthouse to represent tenants on Christmas Eve,” Ehman continued. “It was sad for tenants to face eviction at that time and Lucy brought boxes of fruits and other gifts Starbucks had received for the holidays and passed it on. The clients were touched deeply by this gesture her thoughtfulness. This act of kindness stays with me.”
Personally, Helm said she participates in pro bono programs “because I enjoy it. It helps me balance my life and realize what is really important, and I consider it a responsibility as a legal professional to provide access to justice to people who can’t afford it.”
She leads by example. As at HJP, Helm has actively participated in each of the company’s pro bono projects. “With a background as a disability advocate, I have a passion for people with disabilities and focus a lot of my pro bono work and volunteer work in that area.”
Helm has served as a member of the ABA Commission on Mental and Physical Disability Law and was just appointed to the board of Disability Rights Advocates in Berkeley. “I am thrilled to have that opportunity to work with one of the premier legal advocacy organizations devoted to the rights of persons with disabilities,” she said.
“Since 1999, I have spent a week each summer volunteering as a camp counselor at Camp Parkview, a weeklong camp for developmentally disabled adults on Vashon Island. For the last few years, I have taken on the volunteer role of being co-director of the camp. It is a fantastic experience — sleeping in the cabins, arts and crafts, campfires and the whole bit. It is staffed entirely by volunteers.”
Beginning in May 2004, Starbucks expanded its pro bono outreach to include Washington Attorneys Assisting Community Organizations (WAACO), which helps people form and maintain non-profit 501(c)(3) entities, and KCBA’s Kinship Care Solutions Project, which helps people obtain direct representation in non-parental custody cases.
New projects are always brewing. Starbucks’ most recent pro bono partnership is with the Young Lawyer Division (YLD) of the WSBA on the “Wills for Heroes” project, which provides free estate-planning services to emergency first-responders. Starbucks learned about the program when a few attorneys and paralegals attended a WFH clinic at the Auburn Police Department. It then teamed with the YLD to expand the program to a full-day clinic at Starbucks last fall, staffed by about 40 Starbucks attorneys and paralegals, as well as many other volunteers recruited by the YLD. While two staffers (former baristas) provided the lattes and cappuccinos, the legal team completed some 150 wills and trust documents.
Starbucks also partnered for a year and a half with the Access to Justice Institute at Seattle University School of Law, co-sponsoring a Community Justice Center (CJC), where people from the community were invited to the Starbucks Support Center to learn about substantive legal issues (including bankruptcy and landlord/tenant law).
These projects are backed by significant support from top Starbucks executives. “We have permission to take on community service projects that speak to us,” said Helm. “We have tremendous support from Paula Boggs [executive vice president, general counsel and secretary] to take on pro bono work because that is what makes sense for legal professionals,” she said.
“We have it easier than some of our fellow in-house attorneys because doing pro bono work is completely consistent with our corporate culture and environment,” Helm said. “It is not only accepted, it is celebrated. I love that about working here.”
In Helm’s view, from top to bottom, helping people has always been a company-wide mission at Starbucks. “Community service has been part of our culture since its very inception,” said Helm. “All of the pro bono and community service work you see today is a product of a grassroots movement by interested people who wanted to make a difference.” That movement is a reflection of Starbucks’ mission. “We want to be community builders.” said Helm. “It’s a part of our company’s values.”
As a community builder, Starbucks also helps other legal departments engage in pro bono opportunities. “We connect … by sharing our story, our pro bono policy, and the things that did and did not work well,” she said. “There is a lot that corporate legal departments can do to add value to the legal community.”
Starbucks’ approach to pro bono and corporate social responsibility is remarkable in its own right. “As a company, we feel that we have a responsibility to give back to communities in which we do business,” Helm said. For Starbucks, people and patrons matter in a holistic sense. “We are all about reaching out to people, engaging them.”
For Helm, pro bono and community service have genuine meaning in life and practice. “Every day, I come [to Starbucks] knowing my job is to do the right thing,” she said. If “doing the right thing” includes helping hundreds of people find access to justice, then it is safe to say Helm is keeping her cup full in the best way possible, every day.
Go Back