Responsible business

We want Boult Wade Tennant to be a responsible business. We are committed to working practices, which take into account the wellbeing of our people, our environmental impact, as well as creating a diverse and inclusive work place. We want to make a positive difference to local communities and communities across the world through our charity work, community investment and pro bono work.

The UN Sustainable Development Goals underpin our business strategy. Acting responsibly and sustainably is at the heart of our culture. Through the choices we make, to the advice we give clients, we know that we can make a difference to local communities as well as those further afield.

Our objective is to create a firm where staff can be themselves.

Boult Wade Tennant is committed to equal opportunities and to enhancing diversity. We don’t expect our staff to be or think the same. Instead we think diversity and inclusion is a contributing factor to the ongoing future success of the firm.  It makes decision making more varied and life more interesting.

We aim to create an inclusive environment where people feel valued and respected, connected to the firm as well as to their colleagues. This is an incredibly important factor in achieving our ambition. We aim to create a supportive working environment where everyone has the opportunity to fulfil their potential. We encourage transparency, trust and respect. Our HR strategy ensures that we are fair to all employees and continually monitor the effectiveness of our inclusion and diversity policy.

We have become one of twenty new partners of the General Counsel for Diversity & Inclusion (GCD&I) https://www.gcdandi.com/our-partners/ 2021-2022. The GCD&I objectives for greater equity, diversity and inclusion across the legal industry are perfectly aligned with our own strategic priorities in these areas. We look forward to working with them this year.

We are proud to be members of IP Inclusive and our COO, Andrew Little, and Partner, Matthew Spencer, are active members of the IP Inclusive Senior Leader’s Think Tank.  Reflective of our vision and goals for a more inclusive future, we are one of the founding signatories to the ‘Leaders’ Pledge’. This pledge is a personal commitment by senior management to work with colleagues to create positive change in the areas of diversity and inclusion. The eight point pledge will act as a guide for implementing our D&I policy and will be reviewed and updated as we work towards our long term goals in this area. Further details about the pledge can be found here. The pledge has been personally signed by Nick McLeish (Senior Partner), Alex Frost (Managing Partner), Andrew Little (COO), Susi Fish (Partner (D&I) and co-lead of the Women in IP committee for IP Inclusive) and Matthew Spencer (Partner (D&I)).

We care about the environment. We are committed to minimising, and where possible eliminating, our environmental impact.

Environmental sustainability is an important issue which is why we have set ourselves ambitious environmental targets. We are determined to reduce our carbon footprint and help support businesses that share our values.  We aim to reduce our carbon emission by focusing on power saving technologies and increasing the efficiency of our heating, water and lighting systems.

We have recently partnered with One Tribe Global, an organisation that works to protect the rainforest and fight the climate crisis. With every invoice the firm issues, One Tribe will pay their conservation charities to protect one acre of rainforest. To see how many trees we have protected so far please visit One Tribe.

The pandemic and the necessity to work from home has had an unprecedented effect on how we work. One of the positives outcomes of this change has been an acceleration in our paperlite strategy, with all our staff working efficiently and effectively online. .

We have created a group of volunteers from across the firm that is chaired by the Chief Operating Officer, Andrew Little. It is this group’s task to ensure we drive forward our social impact work. We want to empower people whether they live in local communities or in communities around the world.