At Radiant Law, making a difference is a core tenet of what we do. As well as making a difference for our clients and helping create better commercial relationships, we believe in the triple bottom line - that we all have a responsibility to not just build a successful business but that we help shape the future in a way that benefits economic, environmental and social welfare.
B-Corp
Certified B Corporations are businesses that meet the highest standards of verified social and environmental performance, public transparency, and legal accountability to balance profit and purpose, and are accelerating a global culture shift to redefine success in business and build a more inclusive and sustainable economy.
In Action:
- We have submitted the paperwork to become a certified B-Corp, to consider the impact of our organisational decisions on our team, customers, suppliers, community and the environment. We expect this to be in place during Q4 2019. Our current score is 88.4; the requirement is 80, and is based on a wide range of factors including environment, governance, staff and customers and we intend to keep improving this score.
People
We are committed to making Radiant Law a great place to work and an employer of choice. We actively promote positive working practices, fairness and equality of opportunity from career development to investing in our staff’s expertise and helping them to fulfil their ambitions and a positive work/life balance.
In Action:
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MBC: In 2019 we adopted, and are due to become a signatory of, the Mindful Business Charter. The Charter is an initiative created by Barclays and two of their panel law firms, aimed at removing unnecessary stress and enabling people to work more effectively and efficiently, as well as be happier and healthier.
Community
We have a long tradition of supporting our local communities. We’re always looking at ways to make contributions, using our individual and collective time, skills or expertise to make a difference to a variety of charitable and community organisations. We encourage all of our employees to give something back to our communities, by volunteering, pro bono work, making donations or fundraising.
In Action:
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Cape Town University: We are pleased to have created a law student crisis fund to assist with emergency financial needs and costs to ensure students are able to graduate. The UCT Law Students’ Council works hard to raise funds year round to support their mission of practically contributing to the development of confident, competent and socially aware law graduates.
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Altum Sonatur: We are sponsors of the Cape Town University law students’ magazine, Altum Sonatur, which is run on donations and aims to provide high quality content and free access to topical and important law-related issues.
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BLA: We are partnering with the Black Lawyers Association of South Africa to provide support for their programme of events aimed at giving black lawyers inspiration around the practice of law and funding to take part in learning experiences that would not otherwise be available to them.
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Emmanuel Educare Preschool: We provide financial and resourcing support. The preschool is number one in the Western Cape for maths and literacy, and is run by the Westlake United Church Trust, which addresses issues of extreme poverty, ill health, early childhood development, unemployment and social issues in the local community.
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Cape Town LawTech Community: We created a discussion and networking group for the under-represented Cape Town legal community that we bring together quarterly to look at how the LawTech landscape is addressing the challenges of today's businesses.
Environment
Radiant Law strongly believes in protecting the environment. The nature of our business means that we have a relatively low environmental impact as a firm. Everyone is encouraged to respect the environment as they go about their work by considering efficiencies, and endeavouring to continually reduce the impact of our business.
In Action:
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With effect from the beginning of 2019 we are carbon neutral. We calculate our carbon footprint (70.1 tonnes in 2019) based on flights, electricity usage, driving to the office and public transport using the calculator on Carbon Footprint and offset by buying credits through Carbon Footprint (80 tonnes in 2019) by supporting community projects in Africa and India focused on reducing cooking with wood and boreholes. These projects have additional community benefits and are certified by the Gold Standard verified emission reductions.
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For every matter we handle on behalf of our clients we plant a tree in partnership with a non-profit environmental charity focused on global reforestation, One Tree Planted, who’s aim is to make it easier for individuals and businesses to give back to the environment, fight climate change, protect biodiversity and help reforestation efforts around the world. The trees are being planted in Africa (currently Tanzania, Rwanda, Ethiopia, Ghana and Kenya). We make the donation every month based on the numbers from Flow.
Access to Justice
We welcome ideas about how we could do more to support access to justice, and are especially looking for projects where we can apply our expertise for maximum impact.
In Action:
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PSU: We are proud to be a partner of the Personal Support Unit, supporting vulnerable people through the UK court system, and have recently been helping to automate court forms.
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docassemble: We are supporting docassemble, which was created for and used by many in the access to justice world.
Board decision making
We have amended our articles to extend the objects of the company to include having a material positive impact on society and the environment and to require our directors to consider in making decisions: (a) the likely consequences of any decision of the Directors in the long term and the impact any such decision may have on any affected stakeholders, (b) the interests of the Company's employees, (c) the need to foster the Company's business relationships with suppliers, customers and others, (d) the impact of the Company's operations on the community and the environment and on affected stakeholders, (e) the desirability of the Company maintaining a reputation for high standards of business conduct and the impact this has on affected stakeholders, and (f) the need to act fairly as between members of the Company.
Targets
We have introduced a number of targets for ESG that will be tracked:
- Printing paper: <1,000 pages a year
- Net promoter score: above 50 and improving
- Engagement survey: 80%
- Carbon neutrality
