Client Stories

Ignition Law

From working with social enterprise clients to helping and contributing to the community

Ignition Law is a law firm dedicated to improving the lives of others.

Their team cares deeply about innovation and entrepreneurship. In fact, many of the team have founded and scaled their own businesses, social enterprises and charities, giving them a unique understanding of the challenges their clients face.

Key Information

Service
B Corp

Industry
Professional Services

Size
50+ Employees

Challenge

“Our clients have responded really positively to the news of Ignition’s intention to certify as a B Corp!”

Alex McPherson
Managing Partner & Founder at Ignition Law

Challenge

Connecting with clients who are a values and ethics fit

Ignition Law are a values-led company who wear their ethics on their sleeve. They wanted to communicate this effectively to access a new network of ‘like-minded’ clients. As Seismic’s law firm, Ignition Law were aware of the B Corp movement. With their growing interest in enhancing their ongoing corporate social responsibility efforts, they decided to assess the feasibility of becoming certified themselves.

To do this, Ignition Law needed expert help reviewing their B Impact Assessment – the online framework behind B Corp certification – to gain a higher degree of confidence in their answers and estimated score. On confirmation that they were coming from a solid base of good business practices, Ignition Law looked for support prioritising the changes and improvements they needed to make.

Approach

Approach

Formalising social and sustainable best practices

Ignition Law carried out a B Corp ‘Diagnostic Project’, to gain a higher degree of clarity over their answers on the assessment and identify a clear pathway to certification.

The diagnostic estimated a B Corp score of 55.1, confirmed by Seismic after a full review to be 56.9 (the average for non-B Corps is 50.9). The next step was to implement an improvement plan as a way to continue embedding best practices across the business and build on their B Corp score.

The ‘Diagnostic Project’ involved a review of 25% of Ignition Law’s answers on the B Impact Assessment (BIA) to gain an initial idea of their success rate. It allowed them to:

avoid common mistakes, increased costs and longer certification times,
capture and formalise good practices,
gather relevant insights as a strong foundation for actions and improvements going forward.

Impact

“In the course of working with Seismic to explore B Corp Certification we have started to explore a fantastic network, made up of decent like-minded people at various stages of their own B Corp journey, with whom we have formed new working relationships and some of whom have become clients in their own right.”

Helen Lucas
Partner, sustainability lead

Impact

Deeper client relationships and strong talent retention

The B Corp framework uncovered various strengths:

Ignition Law’s focus on professional development, mental health and diversity and inclusion,
Their commitment to social impact, and
A formalised code of ethics.

It also identified opportunities, which Seismic distilled into a comprehensive improvement plan.

Two key benefits of Ignition Law’s B Corp journey so far have been improved client relationships and talent engagement and retention.

The improvement plan focussed the leadership team on the nature of their client businesses, and they discovered that at least 40 of Ignition’s clients were themselves purpose-driven. Clients have responded really positively to the news of Ignition’s intention to certify as a B Corp.

Their focus on employee wellbeing and mental health is part of Ignition Law’s unique culture and the reason they have been able to attract and retain such a rich and talented team, compared to huge city law firms, where attrition is high and people burn out frequently.