About us

Corporate Social Responsibility

We have an unequivocal commitment to ethical working practices and diversity in our workplace and are completely committed to running an environmentally responsible business.

Environmental

White & Black is a member of the Legal Sector Alliance, a group of law firms acting on climate change in conjunction with the Law Society and is registered with the Carbon Trust. We strive to be a low emissions business.

Where possible, White & Black engages with suppliers who are committed to minimising their impact on the environment. For example, our supplier of bottled water, Isklar AS, operates all of its facilities at low or zero rated emissions (and offsets at 120% so that every bottle has a net positive effect on the environment). We have a waste management policy in place and seek to recycle where possible. 

We have invested in low-emission, fuel-efficient vehicles for our team, the vast majority of which emit a class-leading 109 grams of CO2 per kilometer.

Ethical Purchasing

White & Black considers it vital to act responsibly and ethically in all its business dealings. This includes our dealings with our suppliers. For this reason, White & Black has developed an ethical purchasing policy as a means of enabling it to use suppliers who operate their businesses in an ethical and socially responsible way.

Suppliers of White & Black are expected to:

• comply with all applicable laws and regulations to which they are subject;
• communicate the requirement to comply with our Ethical Purchasing Policy to its own staff and suppliers;
• adhere to the core principles of our Ethical Purchasing Policy;
• monitor compliance with this our Ethical Purchasing Policy or equivalent standards and adapt to ensure compliance within reasonable time-periods.

White & Black in the Community

White & Black supports local charities. For have a special connection with a local children’s hospice to which we make a substantial donation for every Christmas card we send. We have supported Venturefest (an annual technology event sponsored by Oxfordshire County Council) through the provision of pro-bono legal advice. We have also recently adopted a policy of paying a percentage of the payments we receive from our aged trade debts to charity.

Every member of our team is permitted (and indeed encouraged) to donate 1 working day per year to charitable or pro-bono activities at our expense.  

We also engage with local schools and others to provide work experience opportunities for young people in the area.