Skills-based volunteering in law firms is often thought of purely in terms of pro bono activity. However, half our people are in non-legal roles, and have a range of professional skills to offer, as well as general workplace experience.
Our skills-based volunteering extends to HR, finance and marketing support, as well as careers guidance and employability training.
We see how using our skills in the community challenges and grows our own expertise while passing those skills on to others makes us better managers and leaders. Over recent years, we have been piloting a variety of such new programmes in our London office. A number are described below. The success of this work now sees us committed to 75% of our global volunteering - including non-legal - being skills related during 2011 and 2012.
External coaching
Our internal coaching faculty develops our people to become professionally qualified coaches. As well as coaching internal candidates, we have recently extended this provision to six community leaders across East London. The benefits of this additional support to coachees and their organisations were immediate: “It was really good and came at a perfect time to deal with issues and challenges at work.” “It has been a positive, amazing experience. I have someone to sit down with and talk through problems.” For coaches, the response was similar: “[Mentoring] someone who is not at Linklaters but from a different environment and culture…has helped me to develop my coaching style.”
We will expand this programme during 2011.
Strategic and marketing support
We have a strong partnership with the London Borough of Hackney, as part of which the firm’s Strategy Director was invited to contribute to the borough’s Economic Development Strategy. Other business support to the borough included a team of 25 people from our Marketing department spending half a day advising two Hackney charities on their branding, communication and fundraising strategies. Both charities – one a youth group, the other a social enterprise centre – appreciated the support and advice given.
