Eversheds, A&O, and Standard Chartered GC among winners at debut Legal 500 UK ESG Awards

Winners

Best Environmental/Sustainability Strategy
Legal Charter 1.5
Working to mitigate climate change through supporting clients, informing public policy, and implementing accountable internal best practices, Legal Charter 1.5 is a groundbreaking collaborative commitment developed by a group of major corporate and commercial law firms – Bates Wells, Clyde & Co, DLA Piper, DWF, Gowling WLG, Mishcon, Osborne Clarke and Taylor Wessing.

Best Law Firm Advisory Team: Clean Energy
Allen & Overy
Allen & Overy’s clean energy advisory team wins for its stellar transition finance work, undertaking high-value mandates in the green hydrogen and battery project segments, and for its pathfinding partnerships with industry leaders to decarbonise the shipping and steel sectors.

Best Law Firm Advisory Team: Environmental protection
Clifford Chance
Clifford Chance wins the award for best environmental protection advisory team due to its critical work with the Coalition for Rainforest Nations (CfRN), which seeks to financially compensate countries for actions taken to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by protecting their rainforests. The CfRN’s work covers 90% of rainforests globally.

Best Law Firm Advisory Team: Sustainable finance
Allen & Overy
Through the strengths of its banking and capital markets practices, Allen & Overy wins Best Law Firm Advisory Team in sustainable finance. The firm makes a key contribution in cutting-edge work across carbon credit best practice, green infrastructure securitisations, and sustainability-linked refinancings.

Environmental/Sustainability: In-house Champion (individual)
Gurdeep Boparai, Coventry Building Society
Gurdeep Boparai wins the Environmental/Sustainability: In-house Champion of the Year award due to her instrumental role in Coventry Building Society’s transition to B Corp status, transforming the society’s sustainability reporting, and putting sustainability on the board agenda.

Environmental/Sustainability: Bar Champion (individual)
Estelle Dehon KC
With an excellent track record in acting in environment and planning law cases, Estelle Dehon KC is co-chair of the Bar Council’s Climate Crisis working group, focusing on ways to tackle the climate crisis.

Environmental/Sustainability: Private practice champion (internal)
Jon Bower, Womble Bond Dickinson
Jon Bower from Womble Bond Dickinson takes this award for his pivotal role as chair to the firm’s Net Zero Working Group, and efforts in setting a strategy for both the firm’s and clients’ net zero journeys, including for the National Grid.

Environmental/Sustainability: Private practice champion (client-side)
Ranajoy Basu, McDermott
Ranajoy Basu from McDermott handles an array of impressive social impact finance structuring for extremely worthy causes,
and takes this award due to his role as one of the lead architects of the International Finance Facility for Education (IFFed), which is designed to deliver funding for the education of millions of children, as well as for his work as lead council to the UN in launching a landmark Global Islamic Fund for Refugees (GIFR).

Disability/Neurodiversity: Best initiative to Attract and Retain talent
Burges Salmon
Burges Salmon takes the award this year thanks to its broad and varied approach to disability inclusion spanning training initiatives, audits, recruitment innovation and partnerships, which saw the firm achieve Disability Confident Leader accreditation in 2023.

Disability/Neurodiversity: Private Practice Champion of the year (individual)
Francesca Cadoux-Hudson, Stephenson Harwood
Francesca Cadoux-Hudson, who is visually impaired, established Stephenson Harwood’s Enable network when she was a trainee with the firm, which has improved the working environment for disabled colleagues at the firm. She has also assisted with establishing networks for clients.

Disability/Neurodiversity: Bar Champion of the year (individual)
Alice de Coverley, 3PB
At 3PB, Alice de Coverley, a specialist education, equality, and public law barrister, is well known for working with young people with disabilities and mental health conditions, and sits as co-chair of Neurodiversity in Law, a non-profit which aims to raise awareness and provide support around neurodivergence within the legal profession.

Ethnicity: Champion of the year (Individual)
Elaine Banton
A specialist employment, equality, discrimination and human rights barrister, Elaine Banton is co-chair of the Bar Council’s Equality, Diversity and Social Mobility Committee, and has played a key role on a number of initiatives aimed at improving racial and ethnic diversity at the Bar. She also mentors many aspiring black and ethnic minority barristers so as to support the next generation.

Ethnicity: Best Initiative to Attract and Retain Talent
Burges Salmon
Burges Salmon takes this award for the Bristol Future Talent Partnership, which it set up to provide work experience to teenage students from black or minority ethnic backgrounds, as well as a parallel partnership with the University of Bristol Law School, both of which have resulted in tangible improvement in representation among the firm’s junior ranks.

Governance: Initiative/Team of the Year
Accenture
Accenture wins this year for The Hub, a digital collaboration and innovation platform set up to encourage its suppliers to better meet ESG standards. To date, more than 3,000 assessments have been conducted using The Hub, ensuring responsible governance and ESG compliance in procurement.

LGBTQ+: Champion of the Year (Individual)
Oscar Davies, Garden Court
Garden Court barrister Oscar Davies is one of the most prominent non-binary figures in the legal sector, and has used their profile and platform to campaign for greater acceptance and improved legal protections for non-binary and trans individuals.

LGBTQ+: Initiative of the Year
Osborne Clarke
Osborne Clarke wins the LGBTQ+: Initiative of the Year award for its growing Osborne Clarke Pride network and its various achievements: from collaboration with clients on awareness events, and advocacy in the legal community to the normalisation of pronouns, implementation of trans-inclusive policies, and the provision of accessible healthcare.

Lifetime achievement award (women in law)
Alison Eddy, Irwin Mitchell
Irwin Mitchell London head Alison Eddy has consistently advocated for women in law during a near 30-year career at her firm, where she became the first female regional managing partner in 2012. She established the firm’s D&I board and led its gender equality network, helping to drive the firm’s huge success in terms of gender balance, with over 50% of its partners now female.

Lifetime achievement award (environmental)
Paul Davies, Latham & Watkins
Paul Davies has long been on the front lines of environmental law, qualifying as Slaughter and May’s first dedicated environmental associate in the 1990s, later making partner at Macfarlanes, and for the past decade at Latham & Watkins, where he is now global co-chair of the ESG practice – described as ‘a thought leader who transformed the environmental practice into a leading ESG practice long before others came across ESG’.

Mental health and wellbeing Initiative of the Year
Weightmans
Weightmans takes this award for pioneering Youth Mental Health First Aid courses. The firm now boasts dozens of trained First Aiders, and plans to develop its work with LGBTQ+ youths facing a range of challenges.

Pro Bono Initiative of the Year
Fifth Day
The award in this category goes to Fifth Day, the brainchild of former Pinsent Masons comms head Fred Banning. The pioneering initiative was set up to encourage business services staff to take up volunteering opportunities with charities and non-profits nationwide, and has captured the legal profession’s imagination, going from strength to strength.

Social Mobility: Best Initiative to Attract and Retain Talent
City Century
Launched in 2023, the City of London Law Society’s City Century initiative stands out from the pack, with over 50 City law firms collaborating to promote solicitor apprenticeships throughout the City of London, developing and recruiting talent from less privileged backgrounds.

Social Mobility: Best Initiative to Attract and Retain Talent (outside London)
Browne Jacobson
Browne Jacobson’s commitment to social mobility is exemplified through its FAIRE initiative, which offers students from lower social economic backgrounds a range of opportunities and experience. The firm was ranked as the number one employer for social mobility in the Social Mobility Foundation’s annual Employer Index in 2023.

Social Mobility: Private Practice Champion of the Year (individual)
Jacky Kelly and Rob Powell, Weil
The joint winners in this category – Weil Gotshal finance partner Jacky Kelly and pro bono head Rob Powell, have been working together on a campaign to make social class a protected characteristic under the Equality Act, leading a group of businesses, charities and policymakers.

Social Mobility: Bar Champion of the Year (individual)
Nick Vineall KC
As chair of the Bar of England and Wales for 2023, Nick Vineall KC spearheaded the Bar Council’s partnership with Rare Recruitment to provide contextual recruitment information to all chambers using the Pupillage Gateway, making it available for all sets looking to recruit future barristers – the first branch of the legal profession to use such tool on an industry-wide basis.

Women in Law: Best Initiative to Attract and Retain Talent
Dentons
Dentons stood out from the pack for its commitment to becoming a menopause-friendly employer and its wellbeing initiative which includes the creation of a menopause policy and related initiatives spanning fertility leave and pregnancy loss and failed adoption leave.

Women in Law: Best Initiative to Improve Female Representation within Senior Ranks
Osborne Clarke
Osborne Clarke’s gender action plan sets out short and medium-term actions which aim to have 30% of women in partnership by 2025 and improve the gender balance in senior positions. This includes inclusive recruitment, progression support and creating a diverse culture and working environment.

Women in Law: Private Practice Champion of the year (individual)
Katharine Landells – Withers
After identifying a concerning lack of female barristers conducting private financial dispute resolution meetings, Withers family law partner Katharine Landells took it upon herself to attempt to improve the gender balance in this area, working with both solicitors and barristers, and playing a central role increasing representation from 1% to around 20% in 2023.

Women in Law: Bar Champion of the year (Individual)
Lucy Barbet, 11KBW
Having retired as senior clerk of 11KBW to become the set’s director of development and compliance in February 2024, Lucy Barbet wins this award for her lengthy track record of championing women in practice at the Bar and in the clerking profession, including being the first woman to serve as chair of the Institute of Barristers’ Clerks.

DE&I: Law Firm Initiative of the Year
Eversheds Sutherland
Eversheds Sutherland takes this award for Eversheds Sutherland Unlocked, which has now supported approximately 1,300 students since its inception in 2008. The programme, which supports young people from low-socio economic backgrounds, is run in conjunction with the Sutton Trust, and has included the grant of ‘life-changing’ bursaries to deserving students.

DE&I: In-house Initiative of the Year
Swiss Re and Clifford Chance
Swiss Re wins the In-house DE&I Initiative of the Year award for its groundbreaking collaboration with Clifford Chance on the ‘Risk and Resilience’ programme, which opens legal career doors for underprivileged students globally, fostering diversity, inclusion, and industry accessibility.

DE&I: Champion of the Year (individual)
Sandie Okoro, Standard Chartered
Sandie Okoro receives the DE&I Champion of the Year award for her groundbreaking work at Standard Chartered, which she joined from the World Bank in 2022. Last year she established a diversity taskforce with four key legal advisers – Allen & Overy, Eversheds Sutherland, Simmons & Simmons and Sullivan & Cromwell – to foster diversity and inclusion within the legal profession.

DE&I: Rising Star of the Year
Akil Hunte, NRG Lawyers
Akil Hunte is the chair of NRG Lawyers, a not-for-profit organisation that aims to support non-Russell group students looking to break into law. Akil was a big hit at last year’s Enterprise GC event, stealing the show on a panel debate about generational differences, pushing back against accepted opinions about lawyers of different ages and backgrounds in an increasingly diverse workplace.

ESG: Firm of the Year
Eversheds Sutherland
Eversheds Sutherland takes this award for its holistic approach to ESG – impressing the judges with a consistently strong array of entries covering all three pillars of the ESG acronym, demonstrating practice strength, committed lawyers of all levels, strong internal governance and firmwide initiatives with clear evidence of success.

ESG: Champion of the Year (individual)
Rachel Barrett, Linklaters
Rachel Barrett, who leads the global ESG practice at Linklaters, has an impressively broad involvement with the ESG agenda, providing board and C-suite-level advice on ESG matters to the Magic Circle firm’s clients, while also serving as a driving force in the firm’s internal sustainability efforts. Rachel is also an advisory board member of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on ESG.

ESG rising star
Charlotte von Sicard, Womble Bond Dickinson
Charlotte von Sicard wins the ESG Rising Star award for her pivotal role in transforming Womble Bond Dickinson’s sustainability practices, including the creation of an internal governance structure, and improving the firm’s EcoVadis Sustainability Rating from Bronze to Gold.

Social mobility: In-house Champion of the year (individual)
Barry Matthews, Pennon Group
Barry Matthews from Pennon Group wins the award for in-house social mobility champion due to his pivotal role as a co-founder of the Social Mobility Business Partnership. His dedication has expanded opportunities for students from low-income backgrounds, impacting hundreds across the UK since 2014.

Disability/Neurodiversity: In-house Champion of the year (individual)
Matthew Yates, Whitbread
Matthew Yates from Whitbread wins the Disability/Neurodiversity In-House Champion of the Year award for his leadership as chair of Whitbread’s enAble network, fostering disability accessibility. As a trustee of Caudwell Youth, Matthew extends his dedication to supporting youth with disabilities, advancing inclusion beyond corporate boundaries.

Women in Law: In-house Champion of the year (Individual)
Kirin Kalsi, E.On
Kirin Kalsi from E.On receives the in-house champion of the year award for her dedication to supporting women through the challenges of menopause. Her initiatives have elevated awareness, offered training, and fostered open dialogue, ensuring women feel empowered and supported in their careers.