Integrated approach
Hogan Lovells has illustrated the importance of community investment to its entire business. From strong leadership at Board level through to enabling employees at all levels to support local and global communities, the firm has successfully demonstrated excellence across the five principles of good community investment. By clearly articulating its strategy around key themes focussed on issues affecting disadvantaged communities such as under-employment, access to justice and sexual exploitation of victims of trafficking and domestic servitude, Hogan Lovells has linked its work in the community to its core business proposition, maximising the positive impact it has.
Delivering support
Hogan Lovells has demonstrated the breadth of its support to its communities and the difference that this is making to those communities and to the business. One of the firm’s projects focuses on women who are victims of trafficking and domestic servitude. Together with the Metropolitan Police, Hogan Lovells assist the women and children with pro bono applications to the State for compensation whilst encouraging policy changes to the judicial system. They are encouraging judges to make the traffickers pay compensation to their victims from the proceeds of crime. Hand in hand with this, the firm works with Kalayaan, a charity looking after the needs of domestic workers who are brought into the UK, mostly legally, and then treated as slaves and often sexually and physically abused. The firm works to get compensation for the workers from their employers through applications to the Employment Tribunal. In addition, they are tackling the issue of diplomatic immunity in the courts, as many employers guilty of these crimes are diplomats and their families. Hogan Lovells have assisted 50 women and children to secure compensation worth over £240,000, whilst developing the management effectiveness and planning and organisational skills of their employees. 100% of employees taking part in the programme felt that they sharpened their technical and professional skills and are more committed to the firm as a result.
In 2010, over 20 of Hogan Lovell’s London office lawyers regularly acted as “duty advisers” at court, where they defended social housing tenants at imminent risk of being evicted from their homes through the Bow County Court Advisory Network, supporting 146 direct beneficiaries. More recently, the firm has also worked with The Access to Justice Foundation to launch the ‘It’s Not Just Peanuts!’ campaign, a national campaign encouraging law firms to release unclaimed money from their client accounts to help support free legal assistance in their local community.
Engaging clients
Hogan Lovells is taking the lead in engaging clients to support its community investment activity. It has developed a partnership with commercial client ITV to provide advice to the service users of Body and Soul, a UK charity supporting those closely affected by HIV through the Body and Soul Legal Clinic. The clinic is managed by the Hogan Lovells pro bono department and staffed by lawyers from Hogan Lovells and ITV. It is the first UK partnership between in-house lawyers within a blue-chip corporation and private client lawyers at a major city firm and has supported 200 clients. The firm also works with another client, a major financial institution, to run Debate It!, a weekly after schools club that teaches students to debate. Debate It! takes place throughout the academic year in 4 primary schools within EC1. The club raises the confidence, communication skills and pupils' awareness of current affairs topics, and is the only club of this nature that operates within EC1. Analysis of pupils' progress in reading and writing shows that pupils who took part in the programme achieved 8 Average Point Score [APS] for reading and 7.3 APS for writing, well above the national average.
For more information on Hogan Lovell’s approach to community investment, please visit http://www.hoganlovells.com/citizenship/
