Delivery of our responsible business objective

In April 2024, Sally Dallow became the firm's first Partner Lead for Responsible Business, with responsibility and accountability for the delivery of the firm's objective to lead the way on responsible business.

In her first year in role, Sally has been developing the strategy and key priorities under our responsible business agenda – from governance to priority projects, to reward and recognition of the contributions made. The three core elements of our refreshed approach are:

• Fewer-bigger-better – intentional focus on a smaller number of key projects with bigger and bolder aims to deliver more targeted and impactful outcomes
• Collaboration & coordination – joining the dots and bringing all of our efforts together
• Clarity – of ambition, of processes, and of purpose – the 'what?', 'how?' and 'why?'

Over the last 12-months we have made further investment with the appointment of Paul Britton as our first Head of DEI, followed by two further appointments to strengthen our in-house capability; Yvonne Parkinson, our DEI Analytics and Research Manager, leads our evidence-based approach to action planning and monitoring of impact, and Julie Bullimore, our DEI Programme Development Manager strengthens our DEI training offer. Together with Charlotte von Sicard, our Senior Responsible Business Manager and Martha Payne, Responsible Business Co-ordinator, they form the newly centralised Responsible Business team giving more visibility, clearer contact points and better coordination of our efforts.

Other key achievements over the year include:

• Onboarding a new social value platform, Thrive – so that we are better able to capture and robustly measure our social value contribution
• Refreshing the membership of our Responsible Business Steering Group and preparing terms of reference.
• Designing new ways to recognise and reward those involved in contributing to the delivery of our responsible business objective – including the ability for everyone in the business (and not just fee earners) to record their 'responsible business hours' (to go live in FY 2025/26).

These exciting developments mean that we are now far more able to design, deliver and robustly measure the positive impact of our actions and realise our ambition of leading the way on responsible business.