Activities in London

'Our volunteering programme in London is designed to make a real difference to our local communities. Our office is situated in an extremely wealthy city, but homelessness is a problem. Poor skills and low aspirations are also common issues in the boroughs near our office. Poverty can also make access to justice difficult. These are some of the things we are trying to address through our programme.'
Tim Jones, partner, chairman London Management Group, member of our community and pro bono committee, and member of Business in the Community (BITC)/Business Action on Homelessness London and South East leadership team

Our community and pro bono programme plays an important role in the life of our London office – 36 per cent of our people are actively engaged in activities that contribute over 11,300 hours to pro bono legal advice and over 8,300 to community activities. We have been active in our local community, particularly Tower Hamlets, for many years. We can trace our pro bono activities in the area back to the 1950s – this has given us a knowledge and experience of the area which has proved an excellent foundation for building our community investment programme.

Highlights in the past year include the following.

  • Receiving the Exceptional Achievement 2008 Managing Partners' Forum Award for our 35-year partnership with Tower Hamlets Legal Advice Centre in London. Some 40 per cent of our current partners in London have been involved in this centre at some point during their career.
  • Being awarded a second BITC Big Tick in for our Ready for Work programme. This provides work experience placements to homeless people. In the years 2000 to 2008, 141 individuals have started placements at the firm: of these, 15 have taken up permanent jobs here and several others have gone on to work elsewhere.
  • Leadership in the campaign to fill 40,000 vacancies in school governing boards in the UK, as part of our involvement in BITC's Education Leadership Team. The research we commissioned was presented to the Department for Children, Schools and Families. It has also been used to encourage other law firms (and other employers) to support school governors during 2008 National Pro Bono Week, and led to an increase in the number of our people becoming school governors.
  • The launch of the Inspiring Student Leaders programme with Youth at Risk, enabling the charity to take its work into British universities for the first time. The scheme works with students at Bedfordshire, London Metropolitan and Thames Valley universities, and is supported by the Department of Innovation, Universities and Skills.
  • The launch of the Children's Legal Service unit, as a result of our three-year sponsorship of Shelter's campaign to end child homelessness.
  • Our support and participation in research by the New Economics Foundation investigating the financial and other barriers to employment for homeless people in the UK. The research, commissioned by Business Action on Homelessness, helped to establish what financial incentives would be required to motivate people back to work and deliver an overall net gain to government. It found that each homeless person on benefits who could be considered 'ready for work' costs the UK government approximately £26,000 per year and estimates that there are 20,000 people in this category; after meeting the costs of incentivising people into work, the government would save around £1.7bn over four years, with savings accruing in just over one year.
  • The start of our three-year commitment to the College of Law and Sutton Trust's new diversity scheme, Pathways to Law, designed to encourage more students from 'non-traditional' backgrounds to consider a career in law. In 2008 we provided five work experience placements to pupils from state schools who will be the first in their family to attend university and whose parents are in non-professional occupations. In 2009 we have hosted three.
  • Support for other initiatives designed to encourage a wider range of people into the commercial legal profession in the UK, including the first City Solicitors' Education Trust Summer School programme and Sponsorship for Educational Opportunities, which finds work placements for minority ethnic students – we provided three such placements in 2008.
  • The launch of our matched funding programme to encourage and recognise the many ways in which the people who work here raise money for charities and community organisations. This increased our contribution for the annual Jeans for Genes campaign to nearly £3,200 and to the London Legal Aid Walk to over £10,000. Many people also make donations through our payroll giving scheme.
  • We supported other charitable initiatives by our people including a photographic competition in aid of the Lavender Trust with Breast Cancer Care. We continue to provide regular pro bono legal advice to Cancer Research UK.
  • As part of our second firmwide community and pro bono initiative, nearly 200 volunteers from the London office took part in a range of team challenges helping local communities. We supported other team challenge activities around UN World Environment Day and during the festive season. Additionally, all our trainees get involved in team challenges as part of their induction.

We are members of BITC leadership groups on education, homelessness and international volunteering, and have spearheaded activities for each of these groups in 2008. In 2009 we will be holding 'seeing is believing' visits with BITC for our partners, senior associates and heads of business services departments to develop our programme still further. We are also members of Heart of the City (which helps businesses in the City learn from one another how to develop voluntary and socially responsible programmes in the community) and of London First (a business membership organisation which promotes London as a city in which to do business).

Find out more about our programmes in London: