Corporate social responsibility

We aim to make a positive impact through our three main themes of CSR activity:

• increasing access to justice;
• supporting opportunity; and
• charity partnerships and volunteering.

Increasing access to justice

As a major law firm, we have a role to play in promoting fairer access to legal advice by providing free legal assistance to disadvantaged communities and to charitable organisations (thereby enabling those organisations to focus their economic resources on delivering support to their beneficiaries).

Partners, associates, trainees and paralegals across the firm volunteer to provide pro bono legal advice to a range of charities and community groups. Macfarlanes is a signatory to the national Pro Bono Protocol and to the Law Society's Pro Bono Charter, both of which confirm the firm’s commitment to providing pro bono advice.

Through our pro bono work we are able to help non-profit organisations and individuals who may not otherwise have access to legal services. Lawyers at all levels from partners to trainees (including our future trainees undertaking the LPC) are encouraged to take part and many make a significant contribution in this field.

These are some of the organisations with which we work:

Supporting opportunity

Our staff support young people from disadvantaged backgrounds to develop their skills and aspirations for the future, through education, employability and enterprise support, work experience and mentoring programmes.

We focus on Newham, East London

As part of our efforts around social mobility, we work to encourage young people from less privileged backgrounds to broaden their horizons and to aim high in their education and aspirations. As a firm, we have chosen to focus our support on the borough of Newham which, of our neighboring boroughs, receives far less support from the corporate sector.

Macfarlanes partners with Inspire (the Education Business Partnership for Newham and Hackney), supporting students at local schools and colleges to develop the skills and qualities needed for the world of work.

Hemisphere Education in schools with Legal CORE

Legal CORE (Collaboration on Race and Ethnicity) is a leadership-led, cross-firm collective aimed at tackling the underrepresentation of ethnic minority groups in the UK legal sector. 21 Legal CORE member firms have partnered with RARE to fund racial literacy training in schools via a new social impact initiative Hemisphere Education. Then partnership will offer the training to selected UK schools every year, for three years.

Hemisphere is a brain-training platform that disrupts unconscious bias and improves racial literacy. From hair to names to cultural norms, Hemisphere provides teachers with a toolkit to understand, safeguard and nourish Black students. Over 85% of teachers have never had any specific training on the experience of Black children in education. This is a first, and it works: 90% of users commit to changing their practice.

Macfarlanes is one of the founding members of Legal CORE and the firm will be supporting three schools via this initiative.

Macfarlanes' community day

As part of the firm’s CSR programme every member of staff may take an unlimited number of days to volunteer for a firm-approved charity or community project such as:

• Gardening at Hammersmith City Community Gardens
• An art therapy session with adults with learning disabilities at Arts For All
• Weighing and sorting food at Harold Hill Foodbank
• Supporting chefs and packaging meals at Felix’s Kitchen

This also forms part of our trainee solicitor induction.