Corporate Social Responsibility

What is corporate social responsibility?  |  Our targets and performance
Our awards  |  Our achievements in 2007
What our community partners say  |  What our people say

"We take CSR very seriously. We believe in living our core values and investing in society - by giving something back we are helping to shape a better future for our communities, whether local or global . Our CSR portfolio is an achievement everyone in the organisation is very proud of - and is evidence that our CSR commitment is real and sustained."

- Nigel Knowles, Joint CEO

What is corporate social responsibility (CSR)?

CSR describes the behaviours of an organisation that go beyond basic legal compliance. It encourages full awareness of the economic, social and environmental impacts of an organisation’s activities and encourages businesses to take these impacts into account across their operations.

We rank amongst a growing number of global organisations that have chosen to take CSR beyond a basic self-monitoring process to proactively bring benefit to the wider community. Why? Because global organisations of our stature have the skills, resources and presence to make the most significant impact at both a global and local levels.

Our strategy of bringing benefit to others also has an extremely positive effect on our own business. The diverse initiatives we support strengthen our relationships with the communities we serve whilst presenting unique opportunities to develop our skills and experience.

CSR is enshrined in our corporate vision and is supported by internal policies such as our staff volunteering day and the allocation of 30 pro bono hours each year to our fee earners.

Our CSR initiatives are organised under four platforms – Education, Employability & Enterprise, Pro Bono, People & Communities and Sustainability. Use the links in the left hand navigation list for further details.

Our targets and performance

We are always looking to develop and improve the effectiveness of our CSR programme. To guide us in this process and to inform ourselves and our stakeholders when we achieve our aims, we have set annual community contribution targets. These are summarised in the table below.

Target	2006/7 Baseline	Actual required for 2007/08*
Increase the total community contributions by 10%	£1.833m	£2.016m
Increase CSR hours recorded by fee earners by 25%	8,936	11,170
Increase the number of people involved in separate CSR projects by 10%	45%	50%
Ensure CSR Partners undertake at least 60 hours of CSR recorded time	n/a	60 hours per Partner

* Target periods are July-June

Our awards

Jul 2007	Stand-out Award, CSR Category, FT Innovative Lawyer Awards (Integrated International CSR Strategy)
May 2007	Silver Big Tick Award, Business in The Community UK (DLA Piper and The Prince's Trust: A Perfect Partnership)
Feb 2007	Caring Company Award, Hong Kong Social Services Dept
Oct 2006	Highly Commended, CSR Category, UK National Business Awards
Jun 2006	Best Contribution by a Law Firm, LawWorks UK

Our achievements in 2007

Oct 2007	DLA Piper launches the Legal Sector Alliance - Making Business Sustainable in partnership with Business in The Community and the Law Society
Aug 2007	A Tree for Two Cities carbon offsetting scheme is established in Scotland
May 2007	DLA Piper awarded a Big Tick in the Business in the Community Silver Jubilee Awards for our 10-year partnership with The Prince's Trust
May 2007	DLA Piper is a national sponsor of the May Day Business Summit on Climate Change in the UK, hosted by HRH The Prince of Wales
Feb 2007	Al Gore and Senator George Mitchell speak at the DLA Piper Cooling the Planetevent in Sheffield, UK
Jan 2007	Launch of the Global Sustainability Initiative
Jan 2007	Global Environment Week draws participation from all offices worldwide

What our community partners say

"The initiative undertaken by DLA Piper contributes to the progress of cooperation between the business and the non-profit sector."

- Jean-François Mattei, President, La Croix Rouge Partnership

"My gratitude to DLA Piper, who have been stalwart supporters of my Trust for almost 10 years."

- HRH The Prince of Wales, The Prince's Trust

What our people say

"Candidates are drawn to us because of our CSR ethos and I also find that more and more clients expect it of their suppliers."

- Søren Hornbæk Svendsen, CSR Partner Denmark

"Having a clearly defined CSR strategy has helped to build internal relationships and get an ongoing commitment to this type of work."

- Diego Ramos, CSR Partner Madrid