OUR SOCIAL VALUE JOURNEY
OUR SOCIAL VALUE JOURNEY
OUR SOCIAL VALUE JOURNEY
In financial year (FY) 2024/25, we implemented a new social value reporting platform, delivered by Thrive, which allows us to more robustly measure and report on the impact of our responsible business work, shifting from fragmented activity tracking to firmwide accountability and transparency. Using proxy values aligned with the UK Government’s Social Value Model and the UN Sustainable Development Goals, the Thrive platform enables us to measure and report on the social value we have generated through our activities.
The Thrive platform has helped us to embed a culture of accountability and pride in responsible business. The clear metrics have driven positive behaviour change: teams are actively tracking their responsible business activities, seeking new opportunities to increase impact, and collaborating across offices and business groups. In addition, colleagues can speak more authentically about how our activities deliver social value and are better able to identify opportunities to work with clients around shared values and social impact goals. The Legal 500 UK ESG Awards 2026 recognised this innovative step, bringing new rigour to our social value reporting, with the firm being a finalist in the ‘ESG: Law Firm Initiative’ category.
FY 2025/26 is our second full year of recording.
What is social value?
Social value is the positive impact an action, project or organisation has on people, communities and the environment, going beyond traditional financial metrics. It can be split into three key areas: environment, social, and economic. Examples of activities covering these three key aspects are:
Environmental: efforts to raise environmental awareness and reduce carbon emissions
Social: promoting cohesive communities through charitable donations and volunteering
Economic: creating employment opportunities and recruiting inclusively
Our social value performance in FY 2025/26
We have delivered £3m of social value in FY 2025/26, matching our impact in FY 2024/25, recording growth in 11 areas and against 9 new metrics. Some of the ways we have embedded and grown our commitment to social value include:
Measuring how we support staff learning, offer career advice and provide specific skills and other training to colleagues
Creating new T-Level opportunities at the firm
Increasing our charitable donations through our Womble Bond Dickinson Foundation’s Grant Funding Scheme
Increasing the number of hours given to students at schools and universities in mock interviews, CV writing support, and career advice.
In the bar chart below we group our impact under the headings aligned with our responsible business structure.
Looking forward - FY 2026/27
We remain ambitious and committed to increasing our overall social value impact over FY 2026/27, with a focus on both continuing to capture familiar activities and metrics and adding new social value metrics to our reporting to better reflect the firm’s breadth of work across responsible business.
