Pro bono statistical consulting?

Something I read about legal consulting made me think about statistical consulting.

Don Boudreaux (an economist) points to an op-ed by Josh Sheptow (a law student) who argues that “pro bono work by elite lawyers is a staggeringly inefficient way to provide legal services to low-income clients.” Basically, he says that, instead of doing 10 hours of pro-bono work for a legal-aid society, a $500/hr corporate lawyer would be better off just working 10 more hours at the law firm and then donating some fraction of the resulting $5000 to the legal aid society. Sheptow writes, “For lawyers who have done pro bono work, cutting a check might not seem as glamorous as getting out in the trenches and helping low-income clients face to face, but it’s a much more efficient way to deliver legal services to those in need.” The discussants at Boudreaux’s site make some interesting points, and I don’t have much to add to the argument one way or another. But it did make me think about statistical consulting.

Statistical consulting

I have two consulting rates: a high rate for people who can afford it (and are willing to pay) and zero otherwise. Also, I’ll give free consulting to just about anybody who walks in the door. My main criteria for the free consulting is that they’re doing something which seems socially useful (i.e., it’s something that I’d rather see done well than done poorly) and that they’re planning to listen to my advice. (It’s soooo frustrating to give lots of suggestions and then be ignored. Once nice thing about being paid is that then they usually don’t ignore you.) For paid consulting, I like the project to be interesting, and then, to be honest, I’m less stringent on the “socially useful” part–I just don’t want to work for somebody who seems to be doing something really bad. (That’s all from my perspective. I have no objection if other statisticians consult for organizations that I don’t like.)

Oh yeah, and once I declined to consult for a waste-management company located in Brooklyn. Lost out on a chance for some interesting life experience there, I think.

Anyway, I don’t really do any “pro bono” work that is comparable to providing legal services for indigents. I’m not quite sure what the equivalent would be, in statistical work. Regression modeling and forecasting for nonprofits? Statistical consulting in some legal cases? I don’t know what tradition there is of public-service work in statistics. Of course I’d like to believe that almost all my work is public service, in some sense–giving students tools to work more effectively, participating in scientific research projects, and so forth–but that’s not quite the same thing. And yes, we give to charity (thus following the “Sheptow” strategy), but I do think that, ideally, there’d be some more direct public-service aspect to what we do.

1 thought on “Pro bono statistical consulting?

Comments are closed.