Responsibility Agenda

Responsibility Agenda

Family Law Partners is committed to operating as a socially responsible business. We work hard to drive the firm forward in a sustainable way, which for us means keeping an eye firmly on our role as an employer, a member of our local and legal business community, and an agent of change on the national stage supporting access to justice.

Our responsibility agenda covers four key pillars – the Family Law Partners’ team, access to justice, the communities in which we work and our environmental impact.

Our people

Put simply, we want Family Law Partners to be a great place to work for our staff. We understand that a happy team leads to satisfied clients through the delivery of exceptional customer service. We give our staff the freedom to work in a flexible way with the freedom to expand and grow their roles.

We were one of the first family teams in the country to resource a dedicated external counsellor to support team wellbeing which in turn enables a better service to clients. Our reflective practice model allows team members to explore the dynamics between us and our clients, and encourages our team to build their relationships with each other.

Access to justice

In 2014 we launched ‘Engage’, probably the world’s first virtual family lawyer, to help our clients prepare, free of charge, for their initial, crucial consultation with us, ensuring we could provide bespoke advice from the first minute.

We also created a free child maintenance calculator because of our frustration with the limitations of the official calculator utilised by the Child Maintenance Service.

In 2020, when the challenges of Covid became apparent, we shared Engage with other lawyers and their clients free of charge on our innovation platform called Family Law Lab. We presently have 50 firms across England & Wales utilising Engage.

Diversity and talent

In April 2021 we marked our 10-year anniversary by announcing the creation of a £36,000 scholarship fund with the University of Brighton’s Business & Law School to support candidates from disadvantaged backgrounds to study law.

The scholarship programme will provide economic support for six local law students during the entirety of their undergraduate studies. Additionally, we will provide mentoring opportunities through our family law specialists to help prepare students for future legal careers.

Our community

We are proud supporters of UK charity Magic Breakfast who provide healthy, nutritious breakfasts to 31,000 children each day in 467 schools across England. We donate £5.00 for every feedback questionnaire our clients complete, helping to improve learning for the most disadvantaged children, a better classroom experience for all and improved outcomes for the wider community.

We are active members of the local business community and are part of a network of like-minded experts and professionals who share the same values.

As well as offering our staff the best opportunity to fulfil their careers, we have identified that we can play an active role in kick-starting a career or ambition and regularly welcome work experience students from across the Sussex area.

Our environmental footprint

We are committed to reducing our environmental impact both at a firm level and at an individual level through encouraging positive behaviour change among our team.

One of our objectives (from launch in April 2011) was to become a truly paperless business, and we have taken proactive steps to move towards this. For example, we encourage electronic forms of communication and document sharing this approach delivers an environmental saving but also responds to our clients wishes to communicate with us electronically.

Our major environmental impacts are energy use, consumption of materials e.g. paper, and transport emissions. We are committed to recycling and encourage the team to travel via public transport (or via lift-shares) wherever possible.

We ensure that environmental considerations are taken into consideration in our purchasing decisions and have made a decision not to print marketing collateral and literature. Instead, we promote our services via online channels and social media networks, and make client resources (such as factsheets) available as online downloads rather than hard copies.

If you would like an appointment with one of our specialists then please contact us on 0330 055 2234.