A Florida lawyer's summer daydream builds a Cambodian school.

Sipping wine at the beach last summer, Orlando lawyer Kay Wolf was reading an inspiring book and had an epiphany that would lead to building a school in a rural village in Cambodia that bears the name of her law firm: The FordHarrison School.

Working on writing an article on educating women in Third World countries, Wolf was rereading the best-selling book by husband-wife Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn: Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide.

Wolf focused on a chapter about Bernard Krisher, who retired from Newsweek and founded

World Assistance for Cambodia, and is quoted as saying it's easier to educate girls than rescue them from brothels. Krisher created the foundation that helps donors build schools in the poorest areas of rural Cambodia for $15,000 each.

Wolf thought: "I could raise $15,000! What a great opportunity for the firm!"

"I'm sipping wine, reading this, and I could not let it go," Wolf

recalls with a laugh. "In my buzzed stupor, I sent an email to my partner and said: 'We need to do this.'"

That day at the beach, she didn't hear back from Lash Harrison, the founder and managing partner of FordHarrison, a labor and employment firm of 170 lawyers in offices all over the country.

Cambodia

Later, when Wolf, a partner at the firm, met with Harrison face-to-face and gave him her zealous charitable sales pitch, he told her: "Go for it!"

Wolf took off with a passion, on a mission to raise $15,000 within the firm. Fundraising included $10 tickets to wear jeans on Fridays, bake sales, silent auctions, cocktails for a cause, online Scrabble competitions, and a lunch-and-learn brown bag event. The Chicago office came up with a self-policed "swear jar." A pace-setting group of 10 lawyers matched donations for every equity partner who donated an hour of billable time, and $20,000 was donated directly from the firm.

Wolf's goal was wildly surpassed.

"It's amazing what you can accomplish with a little bit of education about a social issue and a lot of arm-twisting," Wolf joked.

The firm raised $86,000--enough to build a school, buy six computers and solar panels to power them, a satellite connection for Internet access, a printer with ink cartridges and paper, a digital camera, shelves filled with books, a deep water well with water filter, and school supplies for 420 children.

They also were able to hire a computer teacher for five years, who will help the children learn...