We care passionately about our region and about having a positive impact on the communities in which we live and work. Being a Responsible Business is central to who we are and has led the development of our corporate responsibility programme over the last few years. There are five main components of it.
Our charitable trust
Each year we donate a sum equal to 1% of our profits to our charitable fund which is managed for us by the Community Foundation. Grants are then made from that fund to support a wide variety of local projects and charities but predominantly the support goes to those charities in which people from this firm or their families have a personal interest. We also match fund any individual and charitable fundraising efforts by any of our people.
Our pro bono work
We undertake unpaid legal work for a variety of charities and during 2011/2012 we helped nearly 30 charities and the notional value of the time provided for those charities was in excess of £100,000.
Paid leave
In addition to our unpaid work all our people are actively encouraged to take up external roles whether as trustees, school governors or volunteers and everyone is entitled to take up to four half days paid leave each year in order to undertake whatever charitable work they wish.
Charity of the year
Annually, through a voting process across the firm, we choose a charity of the year for which we actively undertake a wide variety of fundraising and similar activities. In 2010/2011 our charity of the year has been St. Oswald's Hospice.
Our Green Team
Part of being a Responsible Business involves having an awareness of the impact that we have on the environment. The work that our Green Team undertakes includes:
- continually reviewing the sustainability of our business practices in the context of available technologies;
- annually calculating our carbon footprint using a recognised methodology in order to identify areas for potential improvement; and
- encouraging our people actively to participate in finding ways to live and work in a more sustainable manner.
The work that the Green Team has done has helped us to achieve ISO14001 accreditation and we remain one of only a handful of law firms across the UK to have achieved this award. You can read our Environmental Policy and Objectives Statement here.