Dignity, conscience, independence, integrity and humanity: such are the principles of our oaths as lawyers, of precious help when designing a corporate social responsibility policy that stands at the very heart of our corporate strategy.
We believe that corporate social and environmental responsibility plays a major role in raising awareness of various issues, including social equity, economic efficiency and environmental protection. By making these issues part of our strategy and by fostering related actions on a daily basis, we actively defend the essential values of quality, social commitment, respect for the environment and the search for excellence.
To find out more about our CSR projects, please click below to view our 2018-2019 CSR report:
In 2015 and 2016, our CSR policy was assessed by Ecovadis and placed in the “Gold” band, i.e. among the top 5% of the 50,000 companies reviewed by the specialist body. Download our Corporate Social Responsibility Charter
We are committed to reducing the energy consumption of our buildings (down 30% these past five years) and to reducing our consumption of disposable products. We also work with responsible suppliers, and strive to preserve natural resources.
In early 2015, we put in place paper and cardboard recycling points in our Paris offices and have since recycled over 129T of paper and cardboard. The same year, we replaced our plastic capsule coffee machines with bean-to-cup coffee machines, which generate ground coffee waste that is recovered and recycled by our service provider.
We commit every day to developing Gide as a community: we put our lawyers and employees first, recruiting and building up their loyalty over the long term; we have developed a demanding training policy for our associates and employees; we invest in gender balance, encourage internal mobility, and promote ethical excellence.
We launched our Pro Bono policy in 2012. Ever since then, an increasing number of Gide members have joined in, with 1,250 Pro Bono hours registered in 2014, 1,500 in 2015 and 1,700 in 2016! For its part, 2017 seems set to record the highest number of pro bono hours completed by our lawyers and staff members since the launch of the policy.
Our programme is governed by a Pro Bono Commission (chaired by Carole Malinvaud, comprising Xavier de Kergommeaux, Stéphane Puel, Olivier Bernardi, Magali Buchert, Jean-Nicolas Clément, Julien David, Antoine Lelong, Jean-François Levraud, Arnaud Michel, Guillaume Navarro, Christian Nouel, and Hugues Scalbert), and is broken down into two types of sponsorship: financial sponsorship and skills sponsorship.
In 2012, we set up an endowment fund, Gide Pro Bono, which receives €250,000 every year from all Gide partners. The funds are used to support specific projects that necessarily meet one of the following three driving themes, as stipulated in the endowment fund's articles of association:
Alongside the funding allocated to various specific projects, our skills sponsorship system enables each member of our firm to allocate up to 40 hours per year on his or her working time to support a project or charity approved by Gide’s Pro Bono Commission. The processing of any member’s hours worked is identical, regardless of whether these hours were for a client file or a Pro Bono project.
As lawyers, we have both a commitment and a moral obligation to do Pro Bono work; we have the ability to help people in a significant and lasting manner.
Carole Malinvaud, Partner, Chair of Gide Pro Bono