The Legal Path to Sustainable Development: Module 12  

The SDGs and Legal Practice

  Live session: 6th November 2021, 13.00 - 15.00 (GMT)

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  • Pre-reading study time
    2 hours
  • Live session 
    2 hours
  • Community of Practice
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Panel Session: How Can Law Firms and Lawyers Support Development?

In this session a panel of senior practitioners working within the top global international law firms, with significant experience coordinating and delivering pro bono services for development organisations and other relevant organisations to further development. They will discuss how they and their firms are contributing towards the SDGs, through their pro bono practices, as well as more widely in their firm's business and operations.

It will also consider the contemporary corporate environment and the importance of legal practitioners becoming equipped in relevant trends and knowledge of the SDGs and the law, for advising, representing and progressing sustainability and the interests of their clients in business, NGOs and the public sector, as well as for the benefit of the world at large.

During the session participants are expected to come prepared to share their ideas and ask their most pressing questions to the panel, and in doing so provide insights on how participants may step towards making their own contribution to the SDG agenda.
MEET THE PANEL

Tom Dunn,
Director of Pro Bono
Clifford Chance

Tom Dunn is a solicitor and the pro bono director at Clifford Chance, where he oversees the firm's global pro bono practice, and takes a lead role in the management of the firm's international pro bono relationships and the firm's global flagship pro bono initiative in Rwanda. He leads on the monitoring and evaluation of pro bono and led on the development of the firm's SDG-aligned pro bono theory of change.

He sits on the steering committee of A4ID's SDG Legal Initiative and the management committee of University House Legal Advice Centre in Bethnal Green. Before working at Clifford Chance, he led a 4-year public legal education project for the residents of Clapham Park Estate in south London. Before that, he was a legal aid solicitor, working in private practice in south London and then Southwark Law Centre, acting for tenants in relation to disrepair claims, evictions and re-housing, and for homeless people bringing public law challenges to local authority decisions about the support they were entitled when trying to get re-housed.
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MEET THE PANEL

Sung-Hyui Park 
Senior Associate
Bates Wells

Sung-Hyui Park is a Senior Associate in the Impact Economy practice at Bates Wells, the first UK law firm to be certified as a B Corp. Sung-Hyui advises on the full range of activities carried out by clients seeking to have a positive social impact through their business and other activities, including capital-raising, formation, governance, and general not-for-profit and commercial law issues.
Before joining Bates Wells, Sung-Hyui trained and worked for 10 years in the Banking & Finance team at Clifford Chance, where she advised on a wide range of international and national financing transactions.

Bates Wells
As well as providing legal advice to Impact Economy clients, Bates Wells is unique in spearheading many developments and reforms in the charity, social enterprise and impact economy sectors, in each case on a pro bono basis and in the furtherance of the SDGs. This includes creating the UK Legal Test for UK certified B Corps, as well as the concepts of community interest companies (CICs), social investment tax relief (SITR) and the statutory social investment power for charities.
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MEET THE PANEL

Carolina Serra
Partner
Beccar Varela

Carolina Serra is a partner at Beccar Varela. She joined the firm in October 2005.

Her practice areas include company law, mergers & acquisitions and banks & financial institutions. She has ample expertise advising both national and international companies on complex corporate law issues and on mergers and acquisitions. Over the past years, she has also counseled on complex financial transactions, including advice in syndicated loans and to the International Finance Corporation (IFC).

Carolina has participated in the structuring and day-to-day advice in many of the trusts held by Fideicomisos y Mandatos S.A., a trust services company owned by our firm which acts as trustee/escrow agent in transactions where clients require those services. She has been recognized by The Legal 500.
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