Olswang has more than doubled the value of pro bono advice handed out by its lawyers in 2011-12 compared with the previous year to more than £1m.

The firm's corporate social responsibility (CSR) report shows the UK top 30 firm carried out £1.3m of pro bono legal advice during the last financial year, compared with £518,692 during 2010-11.

The jump in value comes against a 6% increase in the number of hours dedicated to pro bono work to 11,191, compared with 10,569 the previous year.

The overall percentage of Olswang staff participating in wider CSR activities increased marginally from 72% to 74%.

Projects cited within the firm's CSR report include its involvement in The Citizenship Foundation's Lawyers in Schools programme, which sees lawyers go into schools to discuss legal issues with students, and beekeeping at the firm's Holborn head office, which is an attempt to create a sustainable environment for bees in central London.

Olswang also collaborated with 23 of its clients on CSR projects, which the firm estimates as double the client involvement held by the firm the previous year.

The news comes after Hogan Lovells published its CSR report last week (6 August), with 15% fewer pro bono hours carried out by the firm in 2011 than during the previous calendar year.

The report shows that, the transatlantic firm, which employed 5,069 full-time equivalent staff in 2011, recorded a total of 104,047 pro bono hours across 40 of its 43 offices worldwide, compared with 122,935 hours across the same amount of offices in 2010.