In touch community report 2006

I’m a banking lawyer and I’ve been at Norton Rose for ten years.

In that time I’ve been involved in pro bono work, at first volunteering at the Tower Hamlets Law Centre in London (I did that one evening a week for three years) and then, for the last six years, with Kate Pilkington (my secretary), running the Tower Hamlets Education Business Partnership scheme. We’ve held book sales to raise funds for local primary schools, and I’ve attended weekly reading and numeracy sessions with local schoolchildren. I go to weekly IT sessions at the moment and I’m on the pro bono committee. And for three years I was a school governor at Virginia Primary School in Bethnal Green in London.

I do it because I want to help in the community. And for selfish reasons: it’s a perfect excuse to make sure you take your lunch and get away from the office. Working with seven-year-olds has a way of taking your mind off anything else.

Right now we are planning how to link up around our 21 offices to share ideas. Two thousand Norton Rose people: there’s plenty of scope for action there.