Clifford Chance has a long tradition of community and pro bono activity - we take our responsibilities to our people, the environment and the communities in which we live and work very seriously. It is one of our stated goals to develop a corporate responsibility platform that is recognised as unequalled in the legal profession. That means we are working harder to align our corporate responsibility with the way we do business - because it's the right thing to do, for our firm, our people and our business, particularly where we act jointly with our clients.

You'll find an overview of our corporate responsibility activities here but for the full picture visit our corporate responsibility site: www.cliffordchance.com/cr

People

Clifford Chance is committed to providing the best possible opportunities for all of our people to develop and contribute to our business. Central to this has been the establishment of the Clifford Chance Academy, which provides a broad range of training and development courses, available throughout our network, as well as tailored training at the local office and practice-area level.

At the same time we are committed to broadening access to legal careers - a strategy that aligns with our support for education initiatives - and to ensuring that once here, our people enjoy the same opportunities to grow, to develop and to feel included in the activities and direction of the firm. Visit Diversity for more information.

Community

While financial rewards are important, you can also gain a lot of career satisfaction from knowing that you've used your talents to help others.

We're committed to a huge variety of pro bono and community programmes because we believe in investing in the communities in which we live and work. Our pro bono and community activities focus on three key areas - access to justice, access to finance and access to education. By focusing on these areas we are able to advocate positive change and to act to bring it about - providing practical help and making a difference to those people and organisations that we would not typically see as clients in our practice of business and commercial law.

We also believe that working beyond the boundaries of our usual business environment helps to give our trainees and lawyers new perspectives, skills and experiences. Throughout your career with us you will encounter many opportunities to become involved in our pro bono and community activities. None of our programmes are compulsory yet many are fully subscribed - it's up to you whether and where you make a social impact. Here are just some of the initiatives and programmes that we support:

Access to justice:

• Providing free legal advice to around 2000 people a year in London through the firm's FreeLaw programme
• Liberty, JUSTICE and Law for All - including through trainee secondments
• Undertaking death row cases in a number of jurisdictions
• Providing free legal advice and representation to the parents of autistic children seeking to improve educational provision for their children in partnership with the National Autistic Society
• Advising a range of non-profit organisations around the world, from Hong Kong to Moscow, Washington to Paris
• Founding member of leading international pro bono brokerage Advocates for International Development ("A4ID"). Litigation Partner Roger Leese is the Chair of A4ID

Access to education:

• The Clare Partnership for Schools works to raise the aspirations of students in East London. Clifford Chance is one of three corporate partners providing funding, strategic programme input and practical support, including business mentoring for students
• We work with Young Enterprise in Milan, participating in their "Ethics in Action" project for high school children
• Our São Paulo office supports Vida Jovem, a charity that provides shelter and education to the city's poorest children

Access to finance:

• Working with microfinance institutions to standardise legal documentation and remove legal costs to enable them to access funding more easily
• Supporting PlaNet Finance, an international NGO that brings together individuals and microfinance institutions
• Working with Integra, an NGO that works with small businesses in eastern and central Europe to alleviate poverty, cut unemployment and help transform communities

The Clifford Chance Foundation

• In 2008 we established The Clifford Chance Foundation to co-ordinate our charitable giving funded annually with £1 million. This funding is targeted at community-related projects - in addition to the giving and sponsorships already undertaken by individual offices - that align with our core focus on widening access to justice, education and finance

Environment

Part of our role as lawyers is to advise clients on the ways that their businesses impact the environment. To do so with conviction and credibility we have to strive to reduce our own environmental impacts - through recycling, encouraging low-carbon commuting and supporting where possible sustainable initiatives, such as the composting programme for all food waste in our London office.

We have appointed an Environmental Steering Committee to review our progress in this regard and are in the process of introducing a firm-wide environmental management system to set and implement commitments and evaluate progress.

Among our commitments are to:

• reduce CO2 emissions by at least 3% from 2007/08 baseline
• gather and analyse data on our environmental performance across our business and to set standards for performance
• work with key suppliers to reduce the environmental impacts of our purchases
• promote environmental initiatives through our corporate responsibility programme
• communicate openly about our environmental policies

On a wider platform we are a leader in the field of climate change and sustainable energy and have worked on a pro bono basis with the International Emissions Trading Association (IETA) to develop structures that will facilitate the growth of carbon emissions trading. Clifford Chance also contributed to the World Economic Forum's debate on climate change in 2008.