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International law firm DLA Piper Rudnick Gray Cary has introduced
measures to co-ordinate its in-house CSR activities across continental
Europe.
The global partnership, which has offices in most European countries, wants to establish a general framework for its community involvement that is applicable both in developed economies and in emerging ones such as Bosnia-Herzogovina and Ukraine.
Elaine Radford, DLA Piper’s UK-based head of CSR, recently convened in Vienna a one-day meeting of a dozen senior partners from various countries to discuss the policy.
‘The idea was to look at a CSR strategy for continental Europe and how we should go about identifying opportunities and evaluating what we do,’ Radford told EP. ‘We don’t want to be terribly prescriptive, and we want to have a framework that takes account of local values and impacts, but we also want to develop something that is cohesive across the continent and can give people in each country an idea of what they can do.’
Although Radford said much of DLA Piper’s ‘better practice’ on CSR stems from the UK, she emphasized there was no question of imposing UK models on others. However, most of the firm’s CSR work centres on pro bono work and volunteering – and this will continue.
The firm has linked up with the four-year-old Engage in Europe project, which aims to increase the quality and extent of employee engagement among participating businesses.
Three other international law firms – Allen & Overy, Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer and Linklaters – are also part of the project run by the International Business Leaders’ Forum and Business in the Community.
DLA Piper is not the first organization to try to set up a CSR policy across national boundaries. KPMG has been developing a common framework for its in-house corporate responsibility programmes covering almost 150 countries while continuing to give autonomy to business units (EP6, issue 9, p3), and mobile phone group Orange has established a Europe-wide network of national CSR co-ordinators, each of whom has been put in charge of local programmes (EP Best Practice, issue 7).
Radford said legal services firms, which have a relatively light social and environmental footprint, ‘have found it quite difficult in general to develop an integrated corporate responsibility strategy because CSR hasn’t been quite so high on their agendas’.
DLA Piper’s initial focus is on the in-house CSR framework, but it also invited some clients to the Vienna meeting to consider how they might become involved in community partnerships with the firm on education, regeneration, the environment and health and wellbeing. The firm already has relationships with Mencap and the Prince’s Trust.
Latest figures show DLA Piper lawyers around the world have so far contributed 11,987 free hours at a notional value of £2million ($3.5m) to pro bono work, including support for the South African Litigation Centre, which gives legal advice to lawyers who are challenging human rights abuses in southern Africa, principally in Angola, Lesotho and Swaziland. DLA Piper has 3000 lawyers in 21 countries in Asia, Europe and the US.
The global partnership, which has offices in most European countries, wants to establish a general framework for its community involvement that is applicable both in developed economies and in emerging ones such as Bosnia-Herzogovina and Ukraine.
Elaine Radford, DLA Piper’s UK-based head of CSR, recently convened in Vienna a one-day meeting of a dozen senior partners from various countries to discuss the policy.
‘The idea was to look at a CSR strategy for continental Europe and how we should go about identifying opportunities and evaluating what we do,’ Radford told EP. ‘We don’t want to be terribly prescriptive, and we want to have a framework that takes account of local values and impacts, but we also want to develop something that is cohesive across the continent and can give people in each country an idea of what they can do.’
Although Radford said much of DLA Piper’s ‘better practice’ on CSR stems from the UK, she emphasized there was no question of imposing UK models on others. However, most of the firm’s CSR work centres on pro bono work and volunteering – and this will continue.
The firm has linked up with the four-year-old Engage in Europe project, which aims to increase the quality and extent of employee engagement among participating businesses.
Three other international law firms – Allen & Overy, Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer and Linklaters – are also part of the project run by the International Business Leaders’ Forum and Business in the Community.
DLA Piper is not the first organization to try to set up a CSR policy across national boundaries. KPMG has been developing a common framework for its in-house corporate responsibility programmes covering almost 150 countries while continuing to give autonomy to business units (EP6, issue 9, p3), and mobile phone group Orange has established a Europe-wide network of national CSR co-ordinators, each of whom has been put in charge of local programmes (EP Best Practice, issue 7).
Radford said legal services firms, which have a relatively light social and environmental footprint, ‘have found it quite difficult in general to develop an integrated corporate responsibility strategy because CSR hasn’t been quite so high on their agendas’.
DLA Piper’s initial focus is on the in-house CSR framework, but it also invited some clients to the Vienna meeting to consider how they might become involved in community partnerships with the firm on education, regeneration, the environment and health and wellbeing. The firm already has relationships with Mencap and the Prince’s Trust.
Latest figures show DLA Piper lawyers around the world have so far contributed 11,987 free hours at a notional value of £2million ($3.5m) to pro bono work, including support for the South African Litigation Centre, which gives legal advice to lawyers who are challenging human rights abuses in southern Africa, principally in Angola, Lesotho and Swaziland. DLA Piper has 3000 lawyers in 21 countries in Asia, Europe and the US.
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