Community and pro bono legal advice

‘We encourage everybody in the firm to take community engagement and pro bono activity seriously. We hope that everybody will spend one day a year on community team challenges, and encourage those with legal expertise to use their skills to the benefit of the wider community. We also encourage everyone to get involved in wider community activities. We believe we are not here merely to make a living and attain our professional ambitions; a wider vision, a sense of the needs of the world around us and a spirit of hope and achievement are equally important, and we are encouraged by the response of our people at all levels in the firm to our community and pro bono activities.’
Konstantin Mettenheimer and Guy Morton, senior partners

Our community and pro bono programme is designed to make a positive difference to the communities where we have offices and, more broadly, to some of the wider legal and social issues that concern so many of us today, which is why we concentrate on investing in the community, including pro bono legal advice. In 2006/7, 92 per cent of our firm-wide contribution was focused on community investment and 8 per cent on charitable gifts.

As a law firm, we believe we have a responsibility to promote human rights and improve access to justice for people in need. As an employer, we believe we have a responsibility to invest in the next generation, to improve the skills and develop the potential of young people in schools and colleges, and to encourage a wider range of people from different backgrounds to consider going into commercial law firms like ours. We also actively engage in tackling important social issues like homelessness and wider social exclusion. For us, this is part of our approach to sustainability.

Encouraging volunteering during working time

Most important to implementing our community and pro bono policy is the involvement of our people.

Everyone who works here is encouraged to contribute one working day each year to our team challenges and to get involved in our community and pro bono programme. In 2006/7, 24 per cent of our people firm-wide chose to participate in our programme, contributing over 25,000 hours. We hope to see an increase on this in 2007/8 following the introduction of our first firm-wide team Community Challenge initiative during October 2007, which involved over 600 people from 23 of our offices.

Four areas of focus

The majority of our total firm-wide contribution is focused on our four themes. Each office, together with its community partners, is responsible for interpreting these themes in a way that is appropriate to their local community:

  • promoting human rights;
  • improving access to justice for individuals and not-for-profit organisations in need by providing free legal advice;
  • reducing homelessness; and
  • raising the levels of achievement and aspirations of young people from disadvantaged backgrounds, and improving their skills.

Overall, our total firm-wide contribution for 2006/7 was over £3.48m. Developing our community and pro bono programme, and increasing participation across the firm are part of our key objectives for 2008.

We have long been working with our clients on community activities, particularly through our participation in the Business in the Community leadership groups on education and homelessness. In the past year, we have become increasingly involved in pro bono initiatives too. We have collaborated in setting up two drop-in legal advice centres in London with two of our clients, and we have provided pro bono legal advice on a microfinance project for developing and emerging market countries for Deutsche Bank. In 2007, lawyers in our London and New York offices also gave pro bono advice on the implementation of a lending programme to ease liquidity in the West Bank and Gaza, particularly for small and medium-sized business, to help regeneration of the area.
  • Winner CSR Firm of the Year 2007 Legal Business Awards ‘Freshfields led the way in the legal sector by being the first law firm to produce a CSR report under the Global Reporting Initiative guidelines in January 2006. The firm has also been a strong supporter of human rights group Reprieve.’
  • Winner The Law Society of England and Wales’ Excellence in Social Responsibility Award 2007 for our programme for homeless people: the ‘range of projects including supporting the homeless charity Crisis on its Urban Village project by providing free legal advice on housing issues made their entry stand out. Most notable was a programme designed to break the cycle of homelessness and social exclusion through providing work experience, job coaching, informal support schemes and pro bono legal advice.’
  • Awarded a Business in the Community Big Tick 2007 for our Ready for Work programme, providing work experience placements to homeless people. Between 2000-2007, 126 individuals have completed successful placements at the firm, 14 of whom have taken up permanent jobs here. Others have gone on to work elsewhere. The Big Tick is given to companies that can demonstrate the positive impact of their responsible business behaviour on society, as well as on the company itself.

Our community and pro bono data has been compiled according to London Benchmarking Group (LBG) measurement principles. Our application of the LBG model has been assured by The Corporate Citizenship Company.