AllAboutLaw Sustainability Pledge

We are supporters of the Sustainable Recruitment Alliance.
We are now carbon-negative. We are also going to report our carbon footprint annually.
We have stopped producing printed products.
We have developed more sustainable ways to engage with candidates via our virtual events platform.
Additionally, we have launched a bespoke platform for our clients to deliver their own events, helping to save hundreds of kilos in carbon emissions.
We have embraced remote working fully and no longer operate from a central office.

This is the second sustainability report by AllAboutLaw. Our goal is to reduce our negative impact on the environment, looking at the waste we produce, the processes we use, the technology we use, and the carbon emissions we produce, among other factors. We aim to make incremental improvements each year and become a fully sustainable business with as little impact on the environment as possible.

In 2023, our company continued to prioritise sustainability and focus on reducing our environmental impact. This report highlights the various steps we have taken and the progress we have made in the areas of remote work, travel, digital advertising, employee engagement, events, and sustainable procurement.

Over the last 14 years, we have spent tens of thousands of pounds on print products, flyers, newspapers, guides, and magazines and have produced millions of printed pages.

The way that people consume information now has drastically changed. We don’t believe that people use our print products as they once did and we have taken time to learn about the impact of deforestation and the compounds and heavy metals in printer ink that can lead to soil and water pollution when left in landfill sites.

In addition, the paper we used often travelled large distances to get to the printers and then travelled further from the printers to our target destinations across the country.

Our main concern was the commercial impact. Almost every client had printed material as part of the marketing campaigns we offered them. This was particularly acute with law firms that are conservative in nature and still invest heavily in print products.

We decided to drop our commercial awareness newspaper and our employability guide and offered clients a range of new digital solutions that are more accountable, have a much wider reach and, of course, have a much smaller impact on the environment.

After a nervous few months working with clients, we saw an almost universal acceptance of our new offering and for that, we are very grateful. We really hope that more firms look to stop all marketing spending on printed material for themselves and via the third parties they work with.

We also ended the contract for our office printer and handed that back to the supplier.

In 2023 this has now been extended and we no longer take part in any marketing initiative that includes print as part of them, so we don't appear in other printed materials.

We have however increased the number of digital advertising we run. It is estimated the carbon footprint for our digital advertising campaigns at approximately 89.4 kg CO2/year. This figure is a rough estimate, as it is challenging for a micro-business like ours to calculate the precise carbon emissions associated with digital advertising.

Despite this challenge, we are committed to understanding and reducing the environmental impact of our digital marketing efforts. We are exploring ways to optimize our campaigns and improve efficiency, reducing both our costs and our carbon footprint. It is clear that often where you save in one area such a print will see an increase in other areas such as digital marketing, but as long as the overall impact improves then we feel that still makes sense.

We used to attend a lot of face-to-face events each year. In reality, there was little evidence of their effectiveness, as it is hard to track the impact of these solutions accurately. Although many of these events were busy, the number of meaningful interactions we had were minimal.

We also felt that we needed to give free gifts to attendees and often we would use generic branded merchandise. We often bought items based on cost, rather than considering the source of these materials, what they were made from, or actually what was being kept or discarded by attendees as soon as they arrived home.

Since the pandemic when we weren’t able to attend any face-to-face events and saw no detrimental effect on our brand. In fact, website registrations increased by an enormous 61% in 2022, which is a good indicator of our increased brand awareness. The same amount invested in digital marketing has provided us with superior results compared to attending events.

When we started to look into the environmental impact of the business, the impact of transport wasn’t something we initially considered, but it turned out to be one of the biggest and most important changes we have made.

Before we started on this journey uur team attended hundreds of client meetings, had merchandise and exhibition stands sent across the length of the country for conferences, fairs and exhibitions. Even the daily commute of our employees all had a big impact on the environment.

We have reduced our business travel to almost zero by holding virtual meetings, which has reduced our carbon footprint significantly. In 2023, we expect an increase in work-related travel and expect to fly around 30,000 kilometres and take around 2,000 kilometres of train journeys. We estimate that this will result in around 2,000 kg of CO2 emissions.

The transition to a fully remote team has resulted in increased productivity and overall employee satisfaction. Employees appreciate the additional free time and cost savings associated with reduced travel. To address the potential isolation associated with remote work, we offer staff members the opportunity to join local co-working spaces, fostering social interaction and a sense of community.
While we have not yet implemented formal training programs or workshops for sustainability, we have been encouraging discussions on this topic during our weekly team catch-ups.

These informal conversations provide an opportunity for team members to share their thoughts, ideas, and concerns related to sustainability and environmental issues. We believe that fostering a culture of sustainability within the company is essential and are considering implementing more structured programs or initiatives in the future.

Additionally, we are exploring other ideas for encouraging sustainable practices among our remote workforce. These include promoting energy-efficient appliances and electronics, encouraging green commuting initiatives, implementing a virtual power management policy, and supporting waste reduction and recycling efforts. We also plan to consult on implementing sustainability measures for our staff's home offices, aiming for implementation in 2024.

Our supply chain runs far and wide and, over the next twelve months, we hope to put more commitments and checks from our suppliers in place to see if we can make the world a more sustainable place together.

We prioritise sustainable suppliers when there is a reasonable alternative and it is easy for us to see that they are sustainable. We are committed to putting more commitments and checks in place over the next twelve months to make the world a more sustainable place together.

This approach helps us incorporate sustainability criteria into our procurement decisions, promoting environmentally friendly products and services, and supporting suppliers with strong environmental performance. We understand that supply chain sustainability is a critical aspect of our overall environmental impact, and we are committed to evaluating and addressing this issue in the future.

We have made our second carbon footprint calculation this year and have done our best to be as thorough as possible. We have tried to take into account that most of our team spend almost all of their working time at home and, therefore, we have tried to factor in their home heating, lighting and internet use.

Our carbon output is surprisingly lean. We don’t do any print, we don’t have an office, we don’t travel to most meetings, staff don’t commute to the office, we don’t attend face-to-face events and Google already offset the carbon we produce via Google for Business Platform which we use.

We have made our first carbon footprint calculation this year and done our best to be as thorough as possible. We have tried to take into account that most of our team spend almost all of their working time at home and, therefore, we have tried to factor in their home heating, lighting and internet use.

Our carbon output is surprisingly lean. We don’t do any print, we don’t really have an office, we don’t travel to any meetings, staff don’t commute to the office, we don’t attend face-to-face events and Google already offset the carbon we produce via Google for Business Platform which we use.

All About Law Sustainability Pledge

Through working with Ecologi we are now officially a carbon negative company

Sustainability Report

Print and Digital Advertising

Merchandise & Events

Transport

Remote work and Employee Engagement

Supply Chain

Carbon Footprint

Carbon Footprint

Partner case studies