• Legal Advisor of the Year Award EMEA: Fundraising – IJInvestor Awards 2021
• Impact Deal of the Year – International Tax Review EMEA Tax Awards 2021
• Ranked in the Top 3 for European Private Equity Buyouts FY 2021 – Mergermarket
• Ranked in the Top 10 Best Law Firms for Pro Bono in the UK – Legal Week 2020 and 2021
• Finalist for Private Equity Team of the Year – The Legal Business Awards 2021
• Finalist for Transatlantic Corporate Team of the Year – The Lawyer Awards 2021
• Finalist for M&A Team of the Year (Large Deal) and Banking & Finance Team of the Year – The British Legal Awards 2021
• Restructuring Team of the Year – The Lawyer Awards 2020
• Highly Commended for Competition & Regulatory Team of the Year – The Lawyer Awards 2020
• Private Equity Team of the Year — Legal Business Awards 2020
• High Yield Deal of the Year — IFLR Europe Awards 2020
• Best Legal Advisor, Energy & Infrastructure - IJInvestor Awards 2020
• Private Equity Deal of the Year — IFLR Europe Awards 2020
• Impact Deals of the Year — International Tax Review European Awards 2020

Our approach to Environment, Social, Governance (ESG) is central to our culture.

The London office ESG strategy focuses on six key areas: Pro Bono, Inclusion, Community,  Wellness & Social, Climate Action and Governance. Weil has developed an initiative to tackle a range of social issues that impact the economic mobility of its clients, people and communities.

Our award-winning London ESG framework is led by a 25-strong partner and counsel committee who provide oversight, governance and support to the key Business Services teams who run each of the ESG pillars.

Our ESG vision is to enhance the social and economic mobility of our clients, people and communities.  To achieve this aim, we deliver a range of activities and initiatives which ensure we are a responsible business that fosters a healthy, supportive, and inclusive culture for our people to lead healthy lives and reach their full potential to deliver the best service to our clients and communities. This culminates in a corporate environment which both encourages and enables partners and employees to use their time and skills to tackle a range issues in the world around them.

Our ESG strategy is built on six components:

• Pro Bono – Our goal is for all lawyers to perform 50 hours a year of pro bono legal advice and in the London Office, all pro bono hours are counted as billable for the purposes of compensation.  Since 2015, the London office has provided more than 67,000 hours of pro bono work on a range of innovative and complex matters in the social finance, humanitarian and access to justice space.  We see pro bono as a vehicle for skills-development and leadership and it allows our lawyers to harness and develop their legal skills while simultaneously helping organisations with a social purpose achieve their goals. We work with a number of Law Centres and advise a range of leading charities, NGOs and social enterprises, with a particular focus on access to justice and social finance.
• Inclusion – For the past 30 years, Weil has been a leader in investing in formal initiatives to empower and engender an inclusive culture. We have a number of network groups, such as the Weil London Multicultural Network, WeilPride (LGBTQ+ association), Social Mobility@Weil and Women@Weil. We also partner with organizations at the forefront of inclusion issues, such as InterLaw, SEO London, Stonewall and Rare Recruitment. We realize that the job on inclusion is never done, and we therefore focus on continuously educating ourselves, listening to each other, leading by example, speaking out and being allies and upstanders, in order to cultivate a workplace of equitable opportunity in which everyone feels free to bring their full self to work and stand up for principles of diversity, inclusion and belonging, without fear of recrimination or retribution of any kind. This inclusive culture means we have the breadth of ideas and the depth of experience to develop innovative solutions to help our clients achieve their goals.
• Community – All Weil partners and employees are encouraged to spend two days a year volunteering in the community. We place a strong emphasis on social mobility and board-level volunteering. We support around 300 young people a year via WEIL (Widening Entry Into Law), a range of employability programs, and we actively support our people to be appointed as charity trustees or school governors. In addition, we also support a number of grass-roots community organizations across London. Since 2015, partners and employees have spent more than 8,500 hours volunteering. Our community programs are designed to help our people to develop new skills, broaden their horizons and take themselves outside of their comfort zone. Under our five-year fundraising strategy “Improving Lives and Raising Aspirations,” we are supporting six charities – Dress For Success, Glass Door Homeless Shelter, Power2, School-Home Support, Social Mobility Foundation and Suited & Booted – until November 2023. We’ve committed to raising £500,000 during this time to help these charities expand their work in tackling homelessness, reducing poverty and improving social mobility
• Wellbeing & Social – To enable our people to perform at their best, everyone at Weil has access to a number of benefits, information and support that endorse our culture, and our social schedule aims to support our cohesive values by offering a broad range of annual activities.
• Climate Action – We have received accreditation for ISO50001 (Energy Management System), which is an internationally recognised industry standard (externally audited), aimed at continuous improvement in energy reduction. We have also achieved consistent top level success at the City of London Clean City Awards for a number of years, with our reduction of single use plastics throughout the office and collaboration with service providers being particularly noted. We are members of the Legal Sustainability Alliance (LSA) and have a Partner lead Climate Action Group within the firm.
• Governance – As a leading law firm we are acutely aware of the importance of a strong compliance culture. We regularly train and educate our people so that they are kept abreast of the regulatory issues affecting our business. We have robust policies and procedures to ensure ongoing compliance and a dedicated team to support our people by horizon scanning for new and developing areas of regulation. This is all underpinned by a governance structure that promotes upward reporting by having clear lines of responsibility and ownership.

ESG in numbers 2015 – 2021 (inclusive)

• 67,000+ hours of pro bono
• 70 hours per lawyer per year
• 600+ pro bono matters
• 8,500+ volunteering hours
• Supported 70+ schools and direct interactions with more 1,500+ state school students via employability workshops, work experience, mentoring and career talks
• £600,000 raised for charities
• placed 6th out of 111 businesses and the No.1 law firm in the GivX Top 25 2018 & 2019 – a list of the most philanthropic businesses in the UK on a per capita basis through time and cash invested in the community