For Clifford Chance LLP, Mercy Ships is the perfect pro bono project, allowing the global law firm to use its multifaceted and international skills in the service of a complex, multinational cause.

Mercy Ships, based in Garden Valley, Texas, and with 17 offices around the world, raises money to convert ocean ferries and cruise ships into hospital ships, which are then staffed with volunteer physicians and nurses who offer their services in developing countries.

Since Mercy Ships was founded in 1978, its fleet, including larger ships such as the Caribbean Mercy and Island Mercy, have passed through more than 550 ports in 70 nations. Today its M/V Africa Mercy is the largest hospital ship in the world and is anchored off Liberia.

"Most pro bono work involves discrete matters on a local or regional basis and doesn't typically touch upon broad-based, global work. That's what we do as a firm handling a spectrum of such work for Mercy Ships," says John Paul Ketels, 63, a recently retired litigation partner in Clifford Chance's Washington office, (he remains a consultant) who first began to work with the organization in 1998. "Clifford Chance serves as global counsel to this major corporation that happens to be a non-profit."

Ketels learned of Mercy Ships through longtime client Myron "Mike" Ullman III, chairman and CEO of J.C. Penney Co. and the chairman of Mercy Ships.

Ketels discovered that a number of Clifford Chance lawyers were already donating to the project. Ketels then made it Clifford Chance's main pro bono project.

"I'm a former U.S. Naval officer, but that's not the main reason," he says. "We saw a great humanitarian need, and this is a great fit for Clifford Chance to represent a global humanitarian organization. The work involves corporate, securities tax, insurance -- we have all that," he says, adding that knowledge of financing, construction, insurance, compliance, intellectual property, trade names, copyrights and licensing agreements also comes into play.

After retiring in May, Ketels passed Mercy Ships to Jeffrey Berman, an M&A partner who specializes in financial institutions. Ketels now serves on Mercy Ships' board of directors. Berman, 50 and based in New York, leads the project, which is supported by 25 lawyers in Washington, New York, Amsterdam, London and Paris.

Why Berman? "I think it's because I always talked a lot about the importance of pro bono, so the firm gave me the opportunity to do more than just talk," he laughs. "I think they were also looking for somebody who could deal with the transactional aspects of the Mercy Ships work.

"My grandfather was a rabbi in Tennessee and Alabama and was very active in the civil rights movement of the '50s and '60s, so I grew up hearing about that kind of commitment," says Berman, who was raised in New Jersey and Philadelphia. After graduating from the University of Rochester and earning his law degree at the University of Virginia, he joined Davis Polk & Wardwell in 1987 and did pro bono work for nonprofit startups.

Berman has his own, private pro bono activities. He is currently active with Families for Russian and Ukrainian Adoption, a nonprofit that his wife Karen set up in 1995 and chaired until earlier this year. The couple adopted a child from Russia in 1994.

He is equally absorbed in another passion: photography. For his recent birthday, his wife treated him to a trip to Yellowstone National Park and the Grand Tetons in Wyoming, where, he chuckles, "I spent a lot of time under the dark cloth and made some good negatives."

Since joining Clifford Chance in 2006, he's been involved in Mercy Ships. Berman helped with the financing of the Africa Mercy. Mercy Ships hopes to raise as much as $100 million to build a new state-of-the-art ship; Berman will be deeply involved with financing aspects of that project as well.

The pro bono work adds variety to Berman's assignments, which includes advising Barclays Capital on the formation of its $1 billion mezzanine loan fund and representing Corsair Capital LLC in its backing of an acquisition by U.S. insurer Sparta Insurance Holdings Inc.

That said, Berman, who was named a Clifford Chance partner in April, admits the slow market has freed up more time to work for pro bono clients. "I told Mercy Ships that this couldn't have come along at a better time for anybody," he says. "Mercy Ships is also a chance to do more of the work I enjoy for a cause that I really believe in."