Trowers & Hamlins' second Responsible Business Report highlights strong progress and direction for empowering sustainable growth

The new report brings the firm's Responsible Business programme to life through interviews and commentary from key Trowers employees, as well as highlighting many of the initiatives and undertakings that staff across the firm have been involved in over the past year. Sections focus on 'How We Do Business', 'People', 'Social Impact' and 'Sustainability' as well as an interview with the firm's Senior Partner, Sara Bailey.

Whilst reviewing the successes and challenges of the past year, the report also outlines the steps the firm is taking to ensure its strategy is enacted and how it can build on the natural strengths of Trowers' culture. Notably it also reiterates that the firm and its employees must always aim to go further in key areas of the Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) agenda.

The report also highlights a number of awards and achievements that the firm has secured since the first report was published, including:

• Winning the Best Internal Engagement Campaign Award and Best Health and Wellbeing Award at the People In Law Awards 202
• Listed as a recommended firm in the inaugural Legal 500 Green Guide
• Being ranked a Top 5 employer for its culture by legal commentator site RollOnFriday
• Supporting more than 90 students in work placements across the firm's UK offices
• Undertaking more than 2,500 hours of volunteer time for charitable organisations
• Achieving 100% renewable energy supply, backed by Renewable Energy Guarantee of Origin (REGO)

"Significant Impact"

Commenting on the report's launch, Sara Bailey said "Since we launched our inaugural report last year, it's been great to see how positively our decision to set out our ambitious strategy has been received by colleagues and clients. It has had a significant impact in terms of increasing the visibility of our agenda across the whole business and, in particular, in providing a framework against which to measure action and progress – helping to focus minds on this critical agenda. 

"We have made some great first steps – for example, we have appointed our first full-time sustainability manager, who has been leading conversations with our supply chain to help us better disclose our impact across our operations. In the background we have also worked to ensure that the numbers we report are as robust as possible, for example our pro bono hours. This is not without the complication that as we continue to improve the completeness of our data, our footprint will change. However, it's great to see that we are moving in the right direction as we continue to see reductions from our baseline. The challenge now is to build on this momentum and keep steadfastly focused on our goals. I said last year that this is not a tick box exercise for us – that holds as true today just as it did twelve months ago." 

Notably, Trowers has also introduced a 'responsible business hours' target. The target is designed to support and encourage Trowers employees to be able to spend time within their working day getting involved in activities that are aligned to the firm's responsible business strategy. This could be working on a pro bono matter, such as those on offer from the firm's new pro bono legal partner LawWorks, or volunteering time to get involved in any of the external mentoring programmes that Trowers supports, for example the Girl’s Network or City Solicitors Horizons.

Moving Forward

With an eye on the future and moving forward, later this year, Trowers' Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (ED&I) team is planning to launch a data drive to encourage more employees to disclose their diversity data, so that the firm gets a more representative picture of the people who make it. Trowers believes that collecting this data will help the firm to refine and ultimately deliver on its ED&I targets, helping it make more informed choices in relation to the positive improvements it will implement to support and retain its people. 

The report also notes Trowers' plans to implement a Gender Action Plan, to help build female representation at partner level. The firm is currently looking into any obstacles that may exist to prevent women joining or staying on the firm's Pathway to Partnership programme.  The firm's Solicitor Apprenticeship scheme is also mentioned, with plans in train to launch the scheme in the coming months. Under the scheme non-graduate apprentices will obtain their law degree and complete their SQE qualifications whilst they work at Trowers – a blend known as 'learn and earn'.

Read our latest responsible business report - transitioning from strategy to reality.