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How your firm can give back
For Joanna Oakey’s practice, supporting communities means so much more – both personally and professionally – than simply donating money. It means having a meaningful, tangible impact.
Jerome Doraisamy
At a certain point, Aspect Legal managing director Joanna Oakey realised she didn’t feel fulfilled, nor did she have a sense of making an impact upon the world.
“I felt like I’d lost a bit of myself along the way of my career, because I’d become so busy with my practice and having two young children, and I wanted to feel like we were doing something deeper. So, I went on a search for ways we could contribute to society.”
Speaking recently on The Boutique Lawyer Show, Ms Oakey detailed her search for charities to donate to – of which she found many – but felt worried about the quantum of donations that might be lost to marketing and administration and, more importantly, whether the impact would be as substantial as she would want. Moreover, being connected to the impact was something she felt strongly about.
“Ultimately, I found a platform that we use now that has really made giving back easy. It’s something that we implement into the business in lots of different and unusual ways,” she mused.
Ms Oakey set up a “Pledge 1%” for her firm, via which 1 per cent of her firm’s profits go towards social impact initiatives.
“Every time a client buys something from us, it triggers an action whereby we contribute on their behalf. Every time we get a new client, we’ll donate a week’s worth of schooling for a child who hasn’t been able to go to school before, for example,” she outlined.
This year, she continued, her firm has a 100 Deals target, in which Aspect is aiming to run 100 SME mergers and acquisitions and, “for each of those transactions, we will fund a microloan for a woman in Indonesia to start a new business and lift them out of poverty. The idea is that, for every business that is sold here, it gives birth to a new business elsewhere”.
Having such targets, Ms Oakey explained, gives her team “something to feel connected to”.
“Every time we do a new deal, we celebrate, because it means more than just a deal for the firm. That’s the beauty of contribution,” she said.
Making pledges isn’t just about herself, she noted: “I wanted to provide an environment for our team where they feel connected to something bigger, and that flows into better delivering for our clients.”
When asked how other boutique firms could get started with giving back in such ways, Ms Oakey said the first thing is to overcome the fears that one is too busy and/or too small to make a positive difference.
“What I learned along the way is that there is never a better time than now to get started, that you just need to find the right tools to make it easy for you,” she advised.
“There is no perfect time in the future when you’re big enough. Any impact that you make at any point is starting to create a wave that is a force for good – especially given the power that lawyers have in society, by way of holding a position that can create movements.”
In the same episode, Ms Oakey discussed the importance of adopting an entrepreneurial mindset in order to succeed.
To listen to the full episode with Joanna Oakey, click below:
Jerome Doraisamy
Jerome Doraisamy is the editor of Lawyers Weekly. A former lawyer, he has worked at Momentum Media as a journalist on Lawyers Weekly since February 2018, and has served as editor since March 2022. He is also the host of all five shows under The Lawyers Weekly Podcast Network, and has overseen the brand's audio medium growth from 4,000 downloads per month to over 60,000 downloads per month, making The Lawyers Weekly Show the most popular industry-specific podcast in Australia. Jerome is also the author of The Wellness Doctrines book series, an admitted solicitor in NSW, and a board director of Minds Count.
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