Maples Teesdale LLP

Key amongst our values at Maples Teesdale is to ensure that we offer a friendly, flexible, supportive, inclusive and collegiate working atmosphere for our staff.

As a firm specialising in commercial property we also value an understanding of the real estate market and strive to be reflective of the industry and the community in which we operate and that we provide commercial advice and are available and responsive to our clients.

We proactively address gender, age, sexual orientation, disability and socio-economic discrimination at all levels of our business; from recruitment to engagement in an active programme of internal and external community, charity and environmental events and initiatives run by our CSR Committee. Our Wellbeing Committee has organised for members of our team to be trained as mental health counsellors and run unconscious bias workshops. We also regularly celebrate cultural diversity, marking events such as religious holidays, Pride and National Womens’ Week.

We are proud of our work with the East End Community Foundation, an organisation that connects businesses with grassroots organisations in the East End. We linked up with the Foundation as we recognise that when you are working in an office in the City it is easy to overlook the poverty and other socio-economic issues on your doorstep. We provide volunteers from our firm for activities as diverse as fixing fences in a community farm, to offering CV and interview technique advice and work experience. Our team is very committed to this relationship and at a recent event we had volunteers from all levels of the firm, from the managing partner to support staff.

As a firm we are signatories to the Commitment Statement and active members of Real Estate Balance, a group which is committed to addressing gender imbalance in the real estate sector. This is an area we are particularly passionate about, because as a specialist commercial property law firm, we have a foot in two industries where women are underrepresented; law and real estate. Earlier this month we organised and hosted our second annual event for our clients and contacts about supporting women in business making the transition into senior management roles and the role of management in 2021. This is part of an ongoing project for us to offer practical advice to women in our in our industries and we are proud of the recognition we have had for these efforts in the market. In September 2020 we interviewed Ric Lewis of Tristan Capital Partners, in association with Bisnow, and discussed how Tristan built a business with an intentional culture that paves the way for diversity and what the real estate sector more broadly can do to solve its diversity problem.

The results of all of the above taken with our ongoing commitment to continued improvement, has been remarkable internally in terms staff engagement, motivation and general well-being and the cohesiveness of the team has been strengthened further.

We recognise that it is our people that make us stand out and that because we can attract and retain the best talent, we are able to offer our clients the best level of service. We offer flexible working and a good work-life balance leading to a very low staff turnover rate which means that clients have consistent teams that they work with allowing long-term relationships to develop. This consistency of teams, enables us to develop a genuine understanding of our clients’ business priorities and plans, assets, styles of working, preferred clauses and procedures. Furthermore, our exclusive focus on the commercial real estate market means that as a Firm, we share our experiences and understanding of the real estate industry both internally and externally, which enables us to keep abreast of developments in the industry and to advise and update our clients accordingly. All of this means that we can tailor our service to ensure we provide commercial advice, delivered in the way our clients want and with deals moving forward swiftly and smoothly.