Responsible Business Impact Report 2025

This year, we are proud to continue our journey as one of the UK’s leading law firms when it comes to responsible business. Our commitment to ESG remains central to our strategy, and we are pleased to share the progress we’ve made across all five of our responsible business themes.

We are delighted to have been named ‘Law Firm of the Year’ at the prestigious Legal Business Awards 2025. With revenue up over 60% since the launch of our ‘BAmbitious’ strategy in 2021, the accolade recognises our standout financial performance, with our firm topping the Top 50 growth rankings in 2024 and sustaining that trajectory in 2025.

As one of the UK legal sector’s strongest performers, our success reflects our strategic investments across client service, people, premises, technology and our responsible business agenda.

Explore our responsible business themes

Highlights About Approach Governance Assessment Timeline

Overview

This continued growth, including a 9% increase in revenue in the last financial year, enables us to deepen our commitment to being a responsible business. It allows us to invest further in the areas that matter most to our clients and communities, including our local partnerships, charitable donations and financial equivalents, through which we have contributed over £542,000 to support positive social impact in the last 12 months.

We have deepened our environmental impact through a landmark partnership with Oxygen Conservation, pledging up to £1 million to invest in high-quality, UK-based carbon credits. This marks a significant step in our carbon reduction pathway and reflects our belief in supporting nature-based solutions close to home.

Our focus on people and fostering an inclusive culture has been renewed with the launch of a new ethnic diversity action plan, aimed at driving meaningful change and improving representation across the firm. We have refreshed how we work with our network of employee-led community groups and launched our next round of reverse mentoring. This follows the success of the initial programme which has seen 72% of strategic leaders mentored by members of our BCultured community.

In the spring of 2025, we undertook a materiality assessment in which we found that clients see ESG as critical to panel entry, that firms should demonstrate consistency and delivery, and some clients see legal advice as an extension of their brand. As a result, we have placed greater emphasis on social value. We listen to our clients, understand their evolving needs, and respond with innovative solutions that create lasting impact for communities and deliver meaningful value beyond legal advice.

As ever, it is our people who drive this success. Their dedication to business for good continues to inspire us, and we are grateful for their energy, ideas and commitment.

Ross Fairley

Senior Partner

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Roger Bull

Managing Partner

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Highlights

See the headlines and discover more about our responsible business themes.

Inclusion and social mobility

– Ethnic Diversity Action Plan launched.

– Relaunched reverse mentoring to support ethnically diverse colleagues.

– Celebrating 10 years of partnership with both Into University and Envision.

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Net zero and sustainability

– £1m committed to high quality UK-based, nature-focused carbon offsets through Oxygen Conservation.

– Donated over 164 tonnes of furniture and equipment as part of commitment to circular economy.

– Reaccredited with ISO 14001 for our Environmental Management System.

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Gardening-Session-with-Flamingo-Chicks-at-New-Fosseway-School-10th-July-2024

Community and social value

– Over £500k in community investment through donations, volunteering and pro-bono.

– 2,615 young people reached through our ‘Working with Schools’ programme.

– Named Law Firm of the Year at Legal Business Awards.

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Wellbeing and engagement

– RollonFriday’s Best Law Firm to Work at for the 4th year in a row.

– Launched Octopus Money partnership to support financial wellbeing.

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Fair employment

– 95% suppliers paid within 60 days.

– 5 years of working with Women’s Work Lab to support access to employment.

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About us

Burges Salmon is an ambitious, sustainable and inclusive firm with a strategic purpose to ensure that our clients, people and wider communities flourish.

Our clients range from the largest private and public sector organisations and institutions to entrepreneurial businesses, as well as wealthy individuals and families.

Working from our offices in Bristol, Edinburgh, London and Dublin, we have built a progressive service culture based on collaboration and teamwork. This is shaped around the needs of our clients and the delivery of excellent service and advice.

We operate in markets where our experience, knowledge and skills deliver highly effective solutions to our clients’ complex needs.

We work for clients in all three UK jurisdictions and globally through our Preferred Firm Network. We collaborate with leading international independent law firms to ensure that our clients have access to excellent service and advice in any part of the world.

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Our Responsible Business approach

We are recognised as one of the leading law firms when it comes to being a responsible business.

Our purpose at Burges Salmon is to be an ambitious, sustainable and inclusive firm where clients, people, and communities flourish. Our long-standing commitment to responsible business is a key part of this. We believe being a responsible business attracts top talent, maintains our reputation, supports our local communities and helps us to stand out in a competitive market for legal services.

This report covers the fourth year of our current five-year responsible business approach that identifies five priorities to deliver against. These include:

Progress on social mobility and inclusivity
Drive net zero and sustainable communities
Collaborate for collective impact
Nurture wellbeing and engagement
Provide fair employment opportunity

These priorities guide us on where to focus our internal initiatives, how we can maximise impact through our core legal services and which not-for-profit organisations to partner with for the biggest positive impact. This report is structured to provide progress updates relating to all five of our core responsible business priority areas, as well as our ten ambitions linked to them.

External benchmarks

We also align to or participate in external programs or benchmarks, including the UN Global Compact, Business in the Community, EcoVadis, CDP and the Lamp House responsible business report.

This ensures that we have external reference points for how we are doing. We were pleased to be ranked as one of the leaders in the Lamp House assessment of responsible business practices of the top 150 UK, US and Canadian law firms.

Through EcoVadis, we are also rated in the top 35% of organisational participants globally.

Governance

The firm’s Board has ultimate ownership of our strategy, including our responsible business strategy.

Our Senior Partner, Ross Fairley, is the Chair of our Responsible Business Committee, which oversees our responsible business strategy and our progress towards annual objectives.

We have several topic-based working groups, each led by a partner to ensure focus and accountability. We have two Taskforces focused on areas we have identified as being of significant strategic importance and where it is critical we understand the risks and opportunities so we can take bold positive action in the coming years.

Diagram of the responsible business Governance structure at Burges Salmon

Our Responsible Business team of ESG experts devises and delivers programmes aligned to our strategy. We have five people-led networks, our BGroups, representing sustainability and diversity topics, with whom we consult with as focus groups when developing new policies or strengthening processes.

These groups also act as an ongoing upward feedback channel to leadership on D&I related matters.

Transparency and accountability are core principles of our approach to responsible business governance. We track objectives and key performance indicators to measure our progress against our strategic objectives.

We publish this information annually in our impact report to ensure accountability and transparency.

We are committed to providing clear and accurate information to our stakeholders, including our clients, our people, regulators and the public.

This impact report each year, our annual reporting on key topics – such as pay gap, diversity data and our Carbon Reduction Plan – and our ESG disclosures and benchmarks help us achieve this.

We encourage open communication and feedback from our stakeholders to continuously improve our approach.

Materiality assessment

Engaging with stakeholders is a key component of our Responsible Business governance approach. We conduct a stakeholder consultation and materiality exercise at the beginning of each five-year strategic period. In 2025, we undertook a new materiality assessment to inform our next five-year strategic period, which begins in May 2026.

This year’s materiality assessment followed international best practices, informed by the Double Materiality Assessment principles included in the European Union’s Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD). With support from a specialist sustainability consultancy, we undertook research interviewing 17 stakeholders: 12 internal senior leaders, as well as five clients from key sectors.

The goal was to identify and explore the environmental and social impacts, risks and opportunities that arise from our business operations.

The assessment identified a range of material topics across environmental, social and governance areas. Issues identified as material included equality, diversity and inclusion, health and wellbeing, climate impact, human rights, ethical working practices and the responsible use of emerging technologies. The findings also highlighted the growing importance of ESG considerations in client relationships and the firm’s role in delivering social value.

The findings from this assessment will inform the development of our new Responsible Business strategy, which will be launched in 2026, ensuring we focus our efforts where we can have the greatest impact and deliver meaningful value to our stakeholders.