Q&A: A global strategy for corporate social responsibility

International firm Clifford Chance's corporate responsibility brochure is displayed prominently at the reception of its London office. This sends visitors a clear message about the importance the firm attaches to its global corporate social responsibilty programme, which focuses on pro bono, community and environmental work. Pro bono partner Michael Smyth talks to Joanna Goodman about the firm's approach to CSR.

What has been your greatest challenge in terms of corporate social responsibility (CSR)?
A major challenge was to draw together a large number of disaggregated activities into a comprehensive global programme. As different territories have different starting points, we decided to identify a common unifying theme, which would enable us to make a difference in all the countries in which we operate. So last year, at our partners’ meeting, we made a five-year commitment to the concept of financial inclusion.

What influenced your choice of theme?
There were two drivers behind that decision. First, all our offices act for banks and financial institutions. Therefore, this topic plays squarely to the expertise of our lawyers. It also held out the possibility of developing productive and symbiotic connections with clients. Second, the concept of financial inclusion is broad enough to allow for a range of different and discrete initiatives. I was anxious not to develop a theme that might be too prescriptive. In the UK it can mean the provision of basic bank accounts to poor people. In developing countries, it can mean the provision of micro-finance, which could be a loan to enable a farmer in India to buy a cow.

How many people participate in CSR activities? Do you set targets?
Statistics for our London office show 54 per cent lawyer activity at an annualised average rate of 25 hours a year, which represents something like 30 minutes per lawyer per week. However, it’s also clear that some people are contributing much more than others.

I am working towards mass participation. I believe that, without making pro bono work mandatory, we will be able to achieve a figure in excess of 75 per cent. Although these activities are encouraged, they are assumed voluntarily and we impose no specific targets. We do offer rewards however. Pro bono is a relevant factor in determining the bonus criteria for lawyers. Each year dozens of lawyers secure bonuses – and larger bonuses – as a consequence of their pro bono work.

Clifford Chance is clearly investing heavily in local community initiatives. Do you track participation in community activities which involve lawyers and non-lawyers?
One of our major strategic aims is to foster a firm-wide culture of community engagement. Given that our lawyer to non-lawyer ratio runs at about 1:1, there are several thousand people on the Clifford Chance payroll who are not lawyers, who are fundamental to the business and firmly committed to its CSR activities.

Although we are keen to analyse and measure participation throughout the firm, this presents some logistical difficulties, most obviously deriving from the fact that our business services people generally do not complete timesheets. When lawyers engage in pro bono activity, they open files, run conflict checks and money laundering checks and fulfil all the usual compliance requirements they undertake when accepting new instructions from fee-paying clients. This enables me to measure the amount of time spent and the value of time written off by all our lawyers when engaging in pro bono and community activities. However, I cannot do that in relation to our back-office people. If a lawyer is participating in a reading scheme, for example, he or she will fill in a timesheet, whereas my secretary won’t log the time she spends on the same activity. That’s a technical deficit in the Clifford Chance system that we want to address.

How does the firm’s CSR commitment support the business?
It’s unquestionable that a serious commitment to community and pro bono work is fundamental to the modern corporate law firm in terms of recruitment, retention and reputation. Students consistently ask potential employers about their commitment to pro bono and community work. Follow-up interviews have indicated that CSR can be a material factor in determining their choice of firm. Of course this means that other firms are also investing heavily in their CSR programmes. Participating in these activities also means a lot to our staff and associates. If, for whatever reason, Clifford Chance abandoned its commitment to pro bono work, people would leave because they would conclude that the firm was saying something about itself and its future which they regarded as unwelcome. Most importantly, our pro bono and community programme underpins our reputation. I take the view that there are only two enduring measurements of the quality of a corporate law firm. One is profit – if you are doing well, you must be doing something right – and the second is a commitment to the public interest because that increasingly secures for well-heeled commercial lawyers a real-world licence to practise. There’s an increasing sense that the holy grail is a combination of dynamic financial performance allied to a commitment to the public good.

What is the unique selling point of the Clifford Chance approach?
Genuinely making a difference requires long-term commitment. Ten years ago we established a relationship with Law For All, a not-for-profit firm which resolutely sticks to welfare law – it does nothing else. Each year we second 16 lawyers to Law For All. In terms of the revenue that those lawyers would have generated for the firm, that represents an annual commitment of at least £400,000. I believe that this is the template for the future, whereby a rich corporate law firm supplies a significant resource, which enables a welfare law firm to compete for legal-aid franchises and to act for clients who it wouldn’t otherwise have the capacity to represent. It’s a win-win situation for everyone. It’s good for indigent and needy clients and it’s good for Law For All, which can plan for the long term in the knowledge that it has additional resources. It’s good for Clifford Chance as our lawyers are getting the best of both worlds: they are acquiring hard-edged, street lawyering expertise and returning to us with a greater sense of what it is to be a lawyer.

How does Clifford Chance manage its global CSR activities?
Our approach to CSR is closely linked to our sense of identity and the way we are perceived by others. It therefore requires clear public leadership. Our senior partner, Stuart Popham, leads a committee drawn from every office, which guides and promotes our global CSR platform. The key is to keep our global platform flexible enough to enable different offices and regions to determine their own programmes while remaining sufficiently focused to ensure that the firm’s broad objectives are maintained. Otherwise, we risk dissipating our efforts. Part of developing a firm-wide strategy is learning to say no and gatekeeping is an important part of my role.

How do you decide which causes to support?
Even the world’s biggest law firm can’t support everyone. I have concentrated on developing deeper relationships rather than attempting to respond positively to every request. Having said that, there is nothing to bar anyone in the firm from embarking on an activity, provided that it’s approved in the normal way. Quite beyond our commitment to financial inclusion, we have an enduring investment in issues affecting the justice system generally. For example, we retain an expertise in death penalty cases. In terms of a local imperative, since moving our London office to Canary Wharf we have reoriented a lot of our outreach activities to the east end of London. Although that meant saying goodbye to some of the organisations that we supported when we were headquartered in the City, it also enabled us to say hello to organisations based in Tower Hamlets, which is one of the poorest boroughs in the country. The contrast between the extraordinary commercial success of the Canary Wharf estate and the neighbourhoods surrounding is lost on few employers in E14, not least Clifford Chance.

What are your key challenges for the future?
I would be disappointed if the establishment by major corporate law firms of CSR platforms led to any neglect of pro bono activities. Another worry is that as the political agenda moves on, firms will become swayed by those who say that pro bono is no more than corporate philanthropy tailored to the technical skills of lawyers. I believe that it is much more than that: it is absolutely fundamental to the concept of a liberal profession. At a time when it is likely that the law in this country will be changed to permit alternative business models, with non-lawyers owning law firms and will-drafting at Tesco, and as the civil legal aid budget in the UK continues to be under pressure, the true differentiators of the profession will become increasingly important. Therefore, any reduction in emphasis on free public interest legal activity would be a disaster. It must also be right that large global firms build on their citizenship credentials by bearing down on their carbon footprint and following the example set by their blue-chip clients in the CSR arena.

One tension going forward will be between reconciling the need for better tools to measure commitments in this area against the drift towards CSR becoming just another area of competitive activity. The better part of me – I hope – laments the fact that awards for pro bono and CSR are now commonplace. This is simply too important to be about securing a prize at the end of the day.

Joanna Goodman is a freelance journalist and business writer. She can be contacted at joanna.goodman@btinternet.com.

Interviewee profile: Michael Smyth

Expertise
Michael Smyth is pro bono partner at international firm Clifford Chance, based in its London office.
Smyth has overall responsibility for Clifford Chance’s public policy and government affairs practice, along with the firm’s pro bono programmes.
He also has extensive experience of commercial litigation and dispute avoidance, including media litigation and public law.
Smyth runs the 24-hour pre-publication unit. He is a regular writer and lecturer and publishes (in conjunction with the Periodical Publishers Association) the firm’s Media Law Review.
He is the author of Business and Human Rights Act (2000); consulting editor of UK Human Rights Reports; and, chairman of Public Concern at Work, the whistle-blowing charity.

Career
Royal Belfast Academical Institution
Clare College, Cambridge (MA Law).
Qualified 1982.
Partner since 1990.
Visiting Fellow of the University of Essex (2003).

Michael Smyth can be contacted at michael.smyth@cliffordchance.com