Editors' Blog

CSR reaches its legal tipping point

Posted 1/02/2008 by Alex Novarese

It is remarkable how quickly a debate can move once the momentum builds. Legal Week recently noted that law firms, while waking up in recent years to the marketing potential of corporate social responsibility (CSR), were not yet ready to take on the full ethical implications of good corporate citizenship.

But perhaps that was doing the profession a disservice judging by this week’s Big Question survey. Drawing on the responses of nearly 200 partners, the support for CSR in its wider sense is clear. Certainly, the nonsensical debate about the correct motives for corporate citizens has been resolved; there’s nothing wrong with businesses acting on CSR for enlightened self-interest - that should be its backbone.

Respondent and Harvey Ingram partner Stephen Woolfe puts it rather more neatly: “CSR is a win/win/win strategy. There are benefits for the community, benefits for staff in terms of personal development and real benefits for us as employers in terms of staff recruitment and retention.”

Of course, it is no surprise to see lawyers talking up pro bono, which always looked like CSR-lite from the profession’s perspective, as it involves few hard choices. But it seems apparent that many law firms are now ready to make more substantive commitments.

And even on the ethics of business-acceptance - in many ways the acid-test for commercial law firms - attitudes have changed dramatically over the last five years. Eleven percent of responding partners said ethical considerations should be a ‘major’ consideration when deciding whether to act for controversial regimes or corporate clients. In total, 94% of partners thought ethical considerations should make a law firm refuse a client in some circumstances, leaving only 6% to fall back on the old standby about everyone having a lawyer. How times change.

As if to ram home the point, Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer chose this week to unveil an expanded CSR report making additional commitments for the firm regarding diversity, pro bono and environmental issues. The document covers the entire firm for the first time, building on a 2005 document drawn up by the firm’s London office.

Much of the meat of Freshfields’ commitments are contained in the Law & Ethics section of the report. The report states that the firm will in some cases refuse new clients on a number of factors, including “sanctions imposed by nations or non-governmental organisations; other reputational issues for our firm, including the effect on other clients’ view of us; [and] the effect of our own people’s view of us”.

The firm gets extra credit for citing the outcome of the regulatory inquiry into its 2004 role advising on the aborted Philip Green bid for Marks & Spencer. Additionally, Freshfields has engaged an external consultancy The Corporate Citizenship Company to assess its compliance.

It may be that the firm ultimately fails to live up to all its commitments but at least Freshfields is trying - and trying in public. It has made a credible contribution to the fast-moving CSR debate.

alex.novarese@legalweek.com