Community and charities

We believe our responsibilities extend beyond our legal work

We believe we have a collective responsibility to the wider community and the environment around us.

Our community and charities programme harnesses the skills, energy and time of our people to support disadvantaged communities through practical help, pro bono expertise and financial support.

We actively encourage everyone across the firm to get involved. Everyone at our firm can take an unlimited number of days to volunteer for a firm-approved charity or community project.

How we make a difference

Supporting opportunity

We work with young people from disadvantaged backgrounds to help them develop their skills and ambitions for the future. Our initiatives include:

education, employability and enterprise programmes;
mentoring and work experience opportunities; and
partnerships with schools and community groups.

Inspire mentoring

We work to encourage young people from lower socio-economic backgrounds to support their education and career aspirations. We partner with Inspire (the Education Business Partnership for Newham and Hackney), supporting students at local schools and colleges to develop the skills and qualities needed for the world of work. We do this through an annual mentoring programme, where students are paired up with a mentor from Macfarlanes and they work on developing skills like interview preparation and CV writing.

Hemisphere Education in schools

Macfarlanes is a founding partner of Legal CORE (Collaboration on Race and Ethnicity), a cross-firm initiative tackling under-representation of ethnic minority groups in the legal sector.

Through Legal CORE, we are supporting Hemisphere Education, a racial literacy programme for state schools. Developed with Rare Recruitment, Hemisphere equips teachers with tools to better understand, safeguard and support black and minority ethnic students. To date, Hemisphere has reached more than 60 schools across England and Scotland, with the potential to impact over 50,000 children. Macfarlanes supports three schools directly through this initiative.

Back to Schools programme

Through our “Back to Schools” programme, we encourage our colleagues who attended a state school to return to their former school and deliver a careers presentation or session about the legal sector and what it is like to work in a commercial law firm. Other colleagues are also encouraged to visit schools, and all these visits are recorded as a community day (our volunteering days).

Charity of the Year

Each year, our people vote for our Charity of the Year from a shortlist nominated by colleagues. We support our chosen charity through fundraising, pro bono advice, governance support, meeting space and volunteering.

This year we are partnering with Coram, the UK’s oldest children’s charity. Coram champions the rights and wellbeing of at-risk children through legal advice, advocacy, adoption support and educational programmes.

Based close to our London office, Coram has deep roots in our local community and we are proud to support their mission.

coram.org.uk