Our Social Impact:
Overview
Our firm is an integral part of the communities – global and local – in which we operate. We believe that supporting these communities and having a positive social impact is part of our responsibility as a business. In particular, we have an important tole to play helping to level the playing field by improving access to justice, access to education and access to professional opportunities for disadvantaged groups.
We do this through our Social Impact Programme which includes our Pro Bono practice and Community Investment initiatives.
Pro Bono
Pro Bono is part of our core practice as a firm. We treat our pro bono clients as we do our paying clients and support all our lawyers to get involved – at all levels of seniority and whatever their area of expertise. We provide free legal advice to help disadvantaged groups get access to justice and to support charities and social enterprises providing vital services.
Impact highlights
- As part of the Greece Pro Bono Collaborative we train and deploy our lawyers for 2-week secondments to the Greek islands of Lesvos and Samos to help asylum-seekers navigate the asylum process.
- We assist survivors of the Windrush scandal to navigate the complex process to apply for compensation under the UK Government’s Windrush Compensation Scheme.
- We run weekly pro bono legal advice clinics in partnership with frontline legal advice centres on issues of family, employment and housing law, providing a vital service to individuals who cannot otherwise access legal support.
- A partner-led team from across our UK offices represents disabled people at the First-Tier Tribunal to appeal the withdrawal of disability benefits.
- We provide free commercial legal advice on an ongoing basis to a wide range of charities and innovative social enterprises.
Community Investment:
Community Investment
We have a long history of involvement with the communities in which we live and work and in 2020 this commitment was reinforced with the establishment of the Charles Russell Speechlys Foundation. Working with the charity partners of the Foundation has enabled the firm to take a more strategic approach – channelling pro bono support, skilled volunteering, mentoring and other in kind support to help build their capacity and ability to deliver services for their beneficiaries.
Impact highlights
A key focus for us since the establishment of the CRS Foundation has been on developing opportunities for our business services teams to share their professional skills and expertise with the charity partners to support them in areas where they often have limited resources. Some examples include:
- Our IT team has been working with four of the core CRS Foundation charity partners to assess their tech needs and identify problem areas where they can help. They have followed up with advice and assistance on key projects including cyber security, video conferencing and CRM systems.
- Our marketing and communications team has been working with two of the charity partners, providing design services and advice on developing a social media strategy.
- The CRS Business School delivered a day long training workshop for charity partners, and will be providing coaching support to members of staff at the charities.
Diversity:
We believe in creating equity for everyone. Not only do we want to attract, develop and retain the best talent, we are committed to providing a work environment and culture that supports individuals to thrive irrespective of race, colour, nationality, ethnic or national origin, gender, gender reassignment, sexual orientation, age, religion or belief, marital or civil partnership status, pregnancy, maternity status, disability or socio-economic background.
By working with people from different backgrounds or with different experiences, we get a different perspective and that helps us to think more broadly, question more and share our skills, knowledge, and experience as part of a collective intelligence.
We believe that creating a diverse and inclusive workplace allows our people to be the best they can be, and do the best for our clients, who can expect a firm that understands their objectives and delivers advice that considers their commercial and personal needs.
Our commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) is led from the top.
This commitment is driven from the top by our dedicated Future Firm Group (FFG), co-chaired by our Managing Partner and Senior Partner. The FFG also includes our Directors of Human Resources, Partner for Responsible Business and our Head of DEI, as well as senior representatives from each of our internal DEI networks. The FFG has five key areas of focus:
The Firm’s five DEI employee Networks are:
- Gender
- Disability & neurodiversity and mental health & wellbeing
- LGBTQ+ inclusion
- Race, ethnicity, religion & belief
- Social mobility
We have active employee networks for each of these areas.
Examples of some of the Firm’s DEI initiatives and achievements include:
We are listed as a Top 75 employer for social mobility, ranked 52nd in the Social Mobility Index of Employers 2022.
Our Career Start Programme provides mentoring, work experience and development opportunities to students from less advantaged backgrounds over a five-year programme. This has been further expanded and we host insight days for non-selective state schools and social enterprises and charities working with young people. These days aim to help young people to learn about careers within the legal profession. We work with the Social Mobility Business Partnership and other sector initiatives such as “Levelling Up Law” to support improving social mobility in the legal profession.
In 2023 the Firm achieved a Gold Award from Stonewall for its commitment and actions to providing a supportive and inclusive work environment for the LGBTQ+ community. The Firm ranked 32nd in the 2023 Stonewall Equality Index (up 21 places since the last index from 53rd to 32nd), and our LGBTQ+ Network were awarded a Highly Commended Network award to recognise their hard work and engagement.
We also have an active DEI Networks for Gender, Religion, Belief and Ethnicity, Social Mobility and CAPability (disability, mental health and wellbeing).
We are signatories to the Law Society’s Women in Law Pledge.
We have Mental Health First Aiders and Champions and have shared mental health stories as part of an internal This is Me campaign. We are signatories of Valuable 500 and members of the Disability Business Forum and have signed up to the Mindful Business Charter.
The Firm partners with Aspiring Solicitors to help us to attract talent from underrepresented groups, widen the pool of talent we recruit and retain as a Firm and increase diversity within the firm and wider legal professional.
We support the 10,000 Black Interns programme and hosting our first student cohort (three students) in 2022. At the end of the internship one of the candidates was offered a paralegal and training contract with the Firm. We have committed to hosting at least two interns each year, for a 6-week period, for the next 4 years.
We are working with Rare recruitment and use a contextual recruitment tool as part of our early talent recruitment process to ensure that we are able to better understand our candidate’s achievement against the context of different challenges. This supports our diversity aims around social mobility and race and ethnicity. We are signing the Rare Race Fairness Commitment which builds on Rare’s work in diversity for graduate recruitment and helps signatories to identify ways to attract, promote and retain Black, Asian and minority ethnic talent.
For more information regarding our initiatives, or vacancies, please check our website, www.charlesrussellspeechlys.com