City lawyers who strike multi-million-pound global deals may be associated with gas-guzzling sports cars but one London firm hopes to profit from their love of green motoring.
Stephenson Harwood, a maritime and commercial specialist founded in 1875, has announced a perk that will allow employees to lease electric cars.
It is the latest in a range of non-traditional inducements being offered in the City as firms battle to recruit and retain lawyers in a market where salaries have rocketed over recent months.
One US law firm is offering newly qualified lawyers at its London office starting salaries of £153,300, outstripping the pay packets for graduates at investment banks.
Stephenson Harwood said that from next year employees would be offered a “salary sacrifice” scheme that would allow them to drive away in any electric vehicle from a Tesla to a Vauxhall Corsa.
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A spokesman said that Axel Koelsch, the chief operating officer at Stephenson Harwood, devised the scheme after realising that “the key drivers for CO2 usage are buildings and transport”. He added that as the firm worked with aviation, shipping and rail clients “to help them keep goods moving in a sustainable way that aligns with the Cop26 goals, [Koelsch] was looking for a way for everyone to participate”.
Many of the City’s wealthiest law firms have attempted to burnish their green credentials before the start of the Cop26 climate change conference, which opened in Glasgow yesterday.
Linklaters, one of the Square Mile’s “magic circle” firms, said recently that it had “set science-based targets which commit us to reducing our carbon emissions by 50 per cent by 2030”. It also claims to be “one of only two law firms to score an A- on the CDP [carbon disclosure project]”.
However, the hot recruitment market is as likely to be driving the move to green motoring as any concerns about the warming planet.
Benefit competition is fierce. In June, the London office of the US firm Cooley announced that it was offering staff £45,000 for fertility treatment as part of a “family-forming” perk. It also said that it would cover adoption expenses. Several City firms have begun offering menopause treatment.
