Playing our part in the wider community as a responsible business is a key element of who we are as a firm and as an employer. Our Responsible Business strategy focuses on two core areas: community and profession skills volunteering.
Our community programme is built around four key areas: social mobility, giving professional skills, charitable giving and responding to local needs. Our people are able to engage with the programme via a variety of ways and we support this by our volunteering leave provision for all employees.
Delivering employability skills courses and support for those facing barriers to accessing the workplace.
Providing job coaches, mentoring and business wear donations.
Work placements and insight day for students who have an interest in a career in law and come from a low socio-economic background.
Each team within our business chooses a charity or charities that have a particular meaning to them. They fundraise for that charity, give gifts in kind and raise awareness of that organisation and its mission.
Our programme enabling all of our lawyers and business services professionals to volunteer their professional skills to non profit organisations.
We have commissioned research to understand fully the need in our local communities and will soon to working with even more organisations to address together those social needs directly.
Our pro bono work is a way for all of our legal professionals to give back to society and support access to justice. Our pro bono programme supports individuals, non-profits and social enterprises.
Gowling WLG has been a highly valued KIND UK partner for more than four years. Their lawyers are a pleasure to work with and have helped many children around the UK, but especially in the West Midlands, gain British citizenship. We wouldn't have been able to grow our programme so much without the support from Gowling WLG, so we look forward to working together for many more years to come.
Katie Fennell, National Coordinator, Kids in Need of Defense
Each year we welcome around 40 Year 12 students to our London office for an Insight Day as part of King's College London's K+ outreach programme, which aims to widen participation in law. During the day, students get to experience life inside a law firm, hear about routes into law (including the solicitor apprentice route) and hear from, and speak to, lawyers from around the firm on how they got into law.
The experience shows students that a legal career is open to anyone - no matter what their socio-economic background.
The Kids-In-Need of Defense (KIND) programme has been a longstanding part of our pro bono programme.
We help some of the estimated 200,000+ undocumented children living in the UK who are British or entitled to British citizenship prove their right to live and remain in the UK. We work with Central England Law Centre, and the KIND programme, to help these children gain legal status.
As part of our strategic commitments around Social Mobility, we are signatories to PRIME - an alliance of law firms working to improve access to, and socio-economic diversity within, the legal profession.
As part of this, we offer a week's work experience in each of our Birmingham and London offices for 10 Year 12 students in each location from lower socio-economic backgrounds. We partner with University of Birmingham and its Routes to the Professions programme and with King's College London and it's K+ programme to recruit our students. We also have a few spaces available for direct enquiries and you can find out more from Georgina Houghton.
Working with United Legal Access in the West Midlands, and with Southwark Law Centre in London, we assist claimants to apply for compensation under the Windrush Compensation Scheme.
Through this project we are able to help those who have suffered harm as a result of the Windrush scandal access justice and seek compensation for the detriments they suffered - this might be because they were made homeless, denied access to healthcare or even, in some cases, deported.
We take our responsibility to our people, our environment and our communities seriously. Trust and transparency are embedded in everything we do and impact every business decision we make. Find out more about our overall approach to corporate responsibility and environmental, social and governance (ESG).
Find out more about our approach
We believe in fostering a culture where everyone feels respected, engaged and encouraged to bring their authentic self to work. Find out more about how we meaningfully integrate diversity, equity & inclusion into our business.
Find out more about our work in DE&I
Our environmental commitment is an integral component of our corporate responsibility, find out how we embrace our environmental duty by implementing eco-friendly practices in our daily operations.
Find out more about our environmental commitment
Good governance is about making transparent, accountable, effective, equitable, inclusive, efficient and legal decisions and implementing them. It's good for doing business and also for enabling positive impacts on the planet, people, communities and beyond.
Find out more about governance
