Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer corporate social responsibility report 06/07 assurance statement

Our relationship with Freshfields

This is the second year that we have provided assurance of Freshfields’ CSR report. Freshfields is a member of LBG (the London Benchmarking Group) – an evaluation framework for corporate community involvement which we manage on behalf of its members and adherents. Beyond Freshfields’ involvement with the LBG we have not had any further commercial relationship with them.

The assurance process

As there are no statutory guidelines for social reporting, we have formed our judgements based on emerging best practice among other companies, the principles of the assurance standard AA1000, the approach of the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), the stated views of principal stakeholders and our own professional expertise and experience.

In particular, we have considered the availability of information, sufficiency of evidence, underlying systems and processes, adequacy of resources allocated and relevant legal and commercial constraints. We have judged materiality by considering significant legal, regulatory and financial impacts, business policies, the performance of peers and competitors and stakeholder views.

A team of five, led by a director, undertook the assurance and commentary process. The team has a variety of professional and technical competencies and experience. The work was commissioned in May 2007 and was completed in January 2008. Detailed records were kept of meetings, assurance visits and correspondence relating to the materiality, completeness and responsiveness of the report, as well as to technical matters relating to the accuracy and presentation of data. Our external assurance and commentary process for the 06/07 report has involved the following elements:

  1. Meetings and discussions with a cross-section of Freshfields partners, managers and employees about its approach to corporate responsibility, its policies and performance, its future challenges and its relations with stakeholders.
  2. An analysis of best practice among other companies, the principles of the GRI and AA1000, followed by discussions with Freshfields’ corporate social responsibility team about reporting the firm’s approach, policies, performance measures, benchmarks, stakeholder relations and future plans.
  3. A review of national and international published sources of information about the views and opinions of external stakeholders.
  4. Reviewing Freshfields’ employee engagement surveys on the firm’s community activities and environmental efforts, as well as taking consideration of external verification provided by Edinburgh Centre for Carbon Management (ECCM) on their climate change impact assessment.
  5. Checks on a sample basis of elements of the report’s contents to underlying records, focusing on the firm’s claims made about managing risks, employees, health and safety, suppliers and environmental impacts.
  6. Assurance of community data, based upon the LBG model and methodology.

Our work therefore did not extend to a complete audit of the report’s contents, nor to direct engagement with stakeholders to seek their views, beyond that mentioned above. We have not been responsible for the preparation of the 06/07 report nor in devising the internal management and reporting systems that yielded the data contained therein, with the exception of support provided on community contributions data collection as part of Freshfields’ LBG membership.

The opinions expressed in this external assurance statement and commentary are intended to extend understanding of Freshfields’ non-financial performance and should not be used or relied upon to form any judgements, or take any decisions, of a financial nature.

The Corporate Citizenship Company