Celebrating Volunteers’ Week at Gowling WLG

A key element of who we are is ensuring we’re playing our part in the wider community. Volunteering plays a central role in our Responsible Business Strategy which focuses on social mobility, professional skills and responding to local needs.

In order to encourage and empower our people to give back to communities, we offer all of our people 21 hours’ volunteering leave every year to use for either one of our charity partners or for a cause that’s close to their hearts.

In 2023, our people spent an incredible 1489 hours volunteering for important causes. For this year’s National Volunteers’ Week, which takes place 3– 9 June, we are highlighting just some of our wonderful volunteers, their activities, and the organisations that we are supporting.

The Choir With No Name

We regularly support The Choir With No Name, which runs choirs and builds joyful singing communities with homeless and marginalised people, around the UK. 

The Choir aims to provide a safe space, help members to build confidence and skills to move away from homelessness long term.

A few of our people recently helped in the kitchen to prepare some meals for the Choir.

Suited for Success

Suited for Success is a charity helping unemployed individuals to gain interview skills and provides a suitable outfit, giving them the confidence and the tools for a successful job interview.  We are long-term supporters of the charity, having been at the forefront of its launch back in 2015.

Andy Stylianou shares his support for the organisation: “We’ve supported Suited for Success since we helped set it up in 2015, providing pro-bono support, marketing and communication, supporting its interview coaching service and holding regular suit drives in our Birmingham office.

“The charity has grown from strength to strength and it’s fantastic to see what a huge change Suited for Success has made in our communities – long may that continue!”

We’re proud to have contributed to the organisation for several years including helping to develop a video job interview coaching service, supporting on the installation of broadband Wi-Fi and more recently helping to bring Suited for Success on the road with a brand-new bus launch.

The bus was launched with the aim to support the unemployed in ‘hard-to-reach’ communities across Birmingham.  Andy Stylianou, Sophia Lawley, Claire Haughton and Sharon Blackwell attended the bus launch to express their support.

We were initially approached by the team at Suited for Success to create a logo for the bus. However when our senior designer Sophia Lawley was asked if she could offer her support, not only did she create the logo and branding for Suited for Success, Sophia went on to create pull up banners designs, posters, flyers, interior vinyl’s, and adverts which were shown on the M5!

Sophia completed all this work within her volunteering hours: “I wanted to get involved and offer my help as it was such a great cause and Patricia and the team at Suited for Success do some great work in the community! It’s so amazing to see the bus with the logo I created in real life, so it’s definitely a proud moment.”

Litter picking with Wild Earth Movement

Sustainability plays a central role when it comes to our Responsible Business Strategy and volunteering activities.

One of the ways we help support our community and the environment is by holding regular litter picking events.

We recently supported Birmingham-based Wild Earth Movement, an environmental non-profit organisation with a strong focus on waste and plastic pollution. The ESG and Responsible Business team ran two successful litter picks this month to support World Environment Day, in which we collected an impressive 133kg of waste, and managed to recycle a whopping 63kg of it, saving it from landfill.

Leaves Breathe – gardening days in London 

We are proud partners of Leaves Breathe, an organisation focused on advancing environmental protection through the creation and enhancement of valuable community green spaces across Greater London.

Leaves Breathe helped us to run some volunteering activities for a few of our teams in London who did gardening activities at Alfred Salter Playground and Lucy Brown House. 

RefuAid

RefuAid provides support to RefuAid clients to build independent and dignified lives in the UK, focusing on three key areas: finance and requalification, language tuition and specialist employment advice.

We regularly host employability sessions in both our London and Birmingham offices to provide support for RefuAid clients trying to re-enter the workplace. Most recently we partnered with RefuAid to support a small group of requalifying lawyers to enhance their soft skills, personal brand and networking abilities.

Ebbsfleet

We recently ran an insight day for Ebbsfleet Development Corporation for year 12 students from various schools in Kent.  Our trainees and lawyers presented on different career pathways into law and we also ran a training session on presentation skills.  Learning applicable skills and understanding more about life at a law firm provided the students with more information to help them make their career choices.

PRIME

We’re proud members of PRIME, an alliance of law firms and in-house legal teams across the UK and Republic of Ireland, which aims to improve access to, and socio-economic diversity within, the legal profession.

Lawyers from the Government Legal Department and client HILL & Smith worked with us on our PRIME work experience week, providing students with an insight into the life of an in-house lawyer.

In partnership with PRIME we held a work experience week in our Birmingham office in which more than 30 people from across Gowling WLG volunteered their time and support.

We have also developed a PRIME follow-on programme to keep in contact with our PRIME students to continue providing support and connections to the law. With thanks to our Early Talent team, we organised follow-up Zoom sessions in October half term and February half term to give the students the opportunity to connect with our Early Talent team and learn more about the training contract and apprenticeship processes.

SIFA Fireside

SIFA Fireside is a local charity based in Digbeth, Birmingham which Gowling WLG has supported for many years. Our people volunteer every Wednesday morning to help cook breakfast for people affected by homelessness. 

SIFA Fireside supports clients in their recovery from the effects of homelessness.  From essential services such as Adult Support Hub together with their Housing Transition Services and the essential needs met through SIFA Fireside’s Support Centre.  Its range of services exist not to ‘throw money at the issue’ but to stand by their people while they rebuild their lives in safety and with dignity.