Well worth aread and watch / listen
At the table (on screen)
Top row (l-r): Lee Shankland-Gort, Addleshaw Goddard; Becky Clissmann, The Chancery Lane Project; Alexander Rhodes, Mishcon de Reya
Middle row (l-r): Maria Connolly, TLT; Matthew Gingell, Oxygen House Group; Caroline May, Norton Rose Fulbright
Bottom row (l-r): Nigel Brook, Clyde & Co; Edward Bridge, Zurich Insurance; James Darbyshire, Financial Services Compensation Scheme
Matthew Gingell describes the Chancery Lane Project (TCLP), of which he is both founder and chair, as ‘the biggest and boldest collaboration of lawyers working around the world, pro bono, to deliver climate solutions through contracts’. The project’s concern is the creation and promotion of precedent clauses openly available for use by all, for free – a line-by-line effort to build the fight against catastrophic climate change in the fabric of the agreements that govern our business dealings.
As general counsel at Oxygen House Group, Gingell also speaks with the authority of a business client, and fellow in-house lawyers are among those most prominent lawyers promoting TCLP’s work. As he points out, that work has an urgency to it.
‘Net zero only works if we all get there,’ he says. From the day the roundtable meets, he notes: ‘There are 2,591 days until 2030, by which we have to cut emissions in half.’ He adds a relatable metric for a legal audience: ‘For law firms, that’s fourteen partner conferences or 10,625 billable hours. That is a big order. That’s going to require every professional in every business around the world to make a difference, including lawyers.’ The legal and legislative timetable eats in to such time, he adds: ‘It took 782 days to bring the Friends of the Earth versus Shell case through the Dutch courts, and that’s now in appeal. And it took 685 days to enact the Environment Bill, so laws and climate litigation aren’t exactly going fast.’
The record
How well has the legal sector done to date? It has a mixed record, Wedlake Bell partner Helen Garthwaite notes: ‘I think if I roll back 20 years… my perception is that the awareness of sustainability and environmental challenges has increased. More so in certain sectors than others.’
Garthwaite, whose practice is in commercial property, says: ‘The bigger corporates [and] the financing side of the industry are driving awareness in their practitioners and their general counsel.’ Action and awareness lag at ‘the consumer end of the industry’, she adds, although high energy costs and extreme weather events have given greater prominence to the climate crisis for all.
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