Business partner in focus

Clifford Chance is one of the world’s leading law firms that has corporate responsibility ‘in its genes’. 'The Climate Neutral Programme of the Amsterdam office dates back to 2005 when our partner Mark Huddlestone took the initiative,’ says Deijs. After becoming as ecologically sustainable as possible in running its own office operations and asking employees to help reduce the impact on the environment by changing their behaviour, Clifford Chance decided to participate in the Hivos Climate Fund to become fully climate neutral.

Success stories
‘The big advantage of working with Hivos,’ says Deijs, ‘is that you don’t just buy trees. You actually help entire communities. This positive story helps our employees to feel involved and committed to this programme. Another plus is that the projects run by the Hivos Climate Fund are sound. People get electricity to read at night and the rest products from their biogas installations fertilize the land. These are terrific success stories to share with our employees.’

Do the math
Apart from raising company pride, the Climate Neutral Program at Clifford Chance also gives them an edge when recruiting young talent while many customers also appreciate doing business with a firm that has a good reputation in sustainability matters. ‘When clients can choose between several big law firms and we have a really good corporate responsibility programme, that just might make the difference in winning that client.’ But the bottom line according to Pascal Deijs is that it makes good business sense: ‘Just do the math. We economise on the costs of running a business while taking responsibility and doing something good for the world.’

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