Highlights
- Winner CSR Firm of the Year 2007 Legal Business Awards
- Certified CarbonNeutral® across all our offices
- Launch of Community Challenge, our first firm-wide community and pro bono legal advice initiative, involving over 600 people in 23 offices
- Business in the Community Big Tick Award 2007 for our programme for homeless people
- Commitment to three-year sponsorship of Shelter, a charity committed to reducing homelessness
- Support for Pathways to Law, a new diversity scheme to encourage students from a wider range of backgrounds to enter the law
- Launch of associate engagement groups to explore areas of interest to our people, including work/life balance and flexible working
- Winner Law Society of England and Wales’ Excellence in Social Responsibility Award 2007
Assurance
For us, CSR reporting is an opportunity to provide information on our social and environmental impacts in a systematic way using recognised benchmark comparisons. In 2006, we were the first major international law firm to produce a CSR report in this way and with external commentary. Our second report is not only firm-wide but also externally audited.
The Corporate Citizenship Company has assured our 2006/7 report using the AA1000 international assurance standard and the Global Reporting Initiative guidelines. Our community and pro bono data is validated by the London Benchmarking Group and our carbon footprint has been independently assured by the Edinburgh Centre for Carbon Management.
Corporate social responsibility: making a difference around the world
Welcome to our corporate social responsibility (CSR) report for 2006/7. ‘Making a difference around the world’ covers our 26 offices in line with our pledge in our first CSR report to expand the scope of our reporting to include our international activities. We are the first major international law firm to produce an externally audited CSR report.
We are proud of our report in which we have assessed our progress against our commitment to being a socially and environmentally responsible business. We have found it a useful and thought-provoking exercise, which we expect will lead to further improvements in the way we conduct our business.
Preparing the report
Our CSR report uses recognised reporting guidelines to provide information in a systematic way on our commitments, activities, achievements and approach to social and environmental responsibility in our offices around the world.
We hope this report helps to improve your understanding of our firm and the way we conduct our business and that it gives you an insight into our commitment to the environment, to the communities we work in, to pro bono legal work and to the people who work here and may work here in the future.
Most of the data is for our financial year May 2006 to April 2007. We have also included comparisons with previous years and information on more recent activities to ensure it reflects what we are doing now.
What’s new
Several new dimensions have emerged since our 2004/5 London-focused CSR report, in particular the way our CSR commitments are evolving and developing across our network of offices, our international response to the issue of climate change and the increasing involvement of our associates in shaping our business.
Looking forward, into 2008 and beyond, our web-based report enables us to provide up to date information for our 26 offices in 15 countries and to minimise our contribution to climate change.