As our Firm has grown, so have our community engagement efforts. In 2017, Dentons' professionals in offices across six continents applied their legal and business skills, passionate commitment and boundless energy to helping others. With more people in more locations than any other law firm in the world, we showed that our ability to support and contribute to communities around the globe is also unmatched.

Responding to a call to launch a pilot housing program

Our Hong Kong office has responded to a call by the Hong Kong Law Society for lawyers to help with a new scheme to address an affordable housing crisis. Astronomical housing prices have become a key structural factor causing poverty and deprivation in Hong Kong. A shortage of public housing has meant that families often have to wait an average of five years before public housing can be allocated. NGOs and social enterprises have come up with a scheme to assist disadvantaged households by persuading private landlords with vacant units to make them available on a short-term basis at discounted rents.

The Law Society called upon law firms to provide services to the Hong Kong Council of Social Service (HKCSS), which is managing the program. We will be assisting HKCSS in formalizing a legal framework for identifying idle or under-utilized housing resources and channeling them to service operators to provide affordable and decent housing units to deprived tenants, as well as building capacity of service operators (and incubating new operators) to develop a scalable and high-quality social housing service. Our work will also include reviewing leases and agreements with the various participants in the scheme (such as landlords, fit-out companies and valuers) and advising on these arrangements.

Helping a charity help charities

We are supporting the work of the Hong Kong-based Centre for Asian Philanthropy and Society (CAPS), an organization dedicated to improving the quality and level of philanthropic investment and the efficacy of social service delivery in the areas of education, health, environment and poverty alleviation throughout Asia. CAPS does so by promoting best practices and standards through research, conferences and other community capacity-building efforts. To ensure that CAPS makes maximum use of its human capital and engages with the most qualified experts, our Hong Kong team has helped the organization develop staff handbooks and negotiate third-party contracts. The team also advises CAPS on copyright issues and provides ongoing counseling in relation to both its day-to-day needs and one-off projects.