After having been nominated for the Sustainable Development Trophy, VdA receives the Jury’s Award presented by the Luso-French Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

This award, which last year was bestowed to Amorim, recognises companies that stand out in the various fields covered by the trophy prize categories.

This year, it was VdA’s application that caught the jury’s eye. Besides being well-founded and fulfilling all the essential criteria, the originality of VdA’s status as a service-provider further contributed to its selection.

VdA’s submission for the 2017 Sustainable Development Trophy was driven by its desire to share and disseminate best practices in the fields of social and environmental sustainability.

The legal sector is not usually included among the sectors that play a leading role in these fields. However, it is VdA’s belief that lawyers act as important intermediaries in the access to justice and, as such, that law firms cannot shy away from supporting social organisations and/or the more vulnerable segments of our population.

For these reasons, VdA created its Corporate Social Responsibility Programme nine years ago, having always promoted the active involvement of its lawyers and staff; and in 2016, it established the Vasco Vieira de Almeida Foundation in a bid to uphold the example of civic, social and cultural engagement set by VdA’s founding partner, Vasco Vieira de Almeida, and to reinforce the firm’s sustained commitment to social and environmental responsibility in the community.

VdA submitted its application for the Sustainable Development Trophy in the hope that the visibility surrounding this initiative would help spread the word about the role and contribution that law firms can play and make towards sustainability, thus inspiring our peers to adopt and develop their measures in this regard