Bindmans will divert 10% of its business client fees to a social justice fund to support access to justice for vulnerable people. So how will it work – and could other firms follow suit?
Prominent human rights firm Bindmans this week announced an ‘industry first’ social justice fund. This will receive 10% of the firm’s business client fees to support access to justice for vulnerable people.
The fund would help improve the environmental, social and governance (ESG) scores of its corporate clients, ‘enhancing their impact across the value chain through socially responsible legal services’, the firm said.
Gabrielle Plews (pictured), who joined Bindmans this year to head the firm’s new corporate and commercial team, came up with the concept of a fund. Plews told the Gazette the money will come from legal fees for non-contentious work. Hourly rates will not increase to cover the fee deduction.
Fund payments in the first year will be divided equally between the Access to Justice Foundation, which supports free legal advice, and Just for Kids Law, which provides legal advice and representation to children in the criminal justice system. It is envisaged that in subsequent years money will go directly to Bindmans clients most in need.
Without knowing how much money will be in the pot at the end of the year, funding clients directly at the outset would have been difficult. ‘It’s like helping an old person across the road and leaving them in the middle of it,’ Plews said.
The Access to Justice Foundation will get a cheque for half of whatever is in the fund this time next year. Arrangements for Just for Kids Law could be slightly different – for instance, the organisation might receive discounted legal advice. ‘Just for Kids Law have already highlighted legal advice they think they will need,’ Plews said.
A social justice fund sub-committee will meet regularly. An impact report will be published every year ‘which shows what we did, how we did it, what the money was paid towards’.
International financial reporting standards ‘have a habit of filtering down’ and clients will become more, not less, regulated in the ESG space, Plews said. Firms need suppliers who can help them to be ESG enablers.
In the social justice fund announcement, Plews said only a law firm with Bindmans’ vision and ethos could deliver such a change to the business world and legal services market. Plews told the Gazette there are few firms like Bindmans ‘because of the legacy of the person who set us up’.
That was human rights lawyer Sir Geoffrey Bindman KC (Hon), who established the firm in 1974 with the aim of protecting the rights and reputations of local Londoners. The firm soon became known for its work in human rights and civil liberties.
Appearing in the Gazette in 2013, Bindman advocated ‘a move towards greater equality within the profession, with those on massive incomes prepared to accept reduced pay cheques to help fund what used to be publicly funded services.
‘When you see law centres closing and people unable to get legal aid, those £1m packages in the City are unacceptable. My advice to anyone wanting to become a lawyer is that while there are still opportunities in the commercial sphere where you can earn good money, serving the disadvantaged is becoming economically unviable. A solution to the funding problem must be found.’
Could other firms set up a social justice fund? Plews acknowledged that smaller firms would struggle. But City firms? The idea of a levy was floated by Michael Gove as lord chancellor a decade ago but failed to materialise amid fierce opposition.
Plews says she wants to ‘throw down the gauntlet’. City firms do not necessarily have to give away 10% of their revenue. They could dedicate 2% of revenue to funding social justice lawyers or write a big cheque to the Access to Justice Foundation.
I put it to Plews that many City firms do a lot of pro bono work. But Plews said a lot of that is litigation and lacks a ‘paper trail’ showing how clients’ fees have affected a case. Bindmans’ social justice fund has a proper structure in place and what it does every year will be recorded.
‘When you give your client an ESG-compliant metric, they can use it in their annual accounts or ESG statements,’ Plews said. With pro bono work, ‘unless they have started reporting in some clever way… how do they link what their corporate clients pay them in corporate legal fees for advice to the pro bono advice they then give to other people? How do they make that link?’
