by Beth Salt | Feb 24, 2025 | LSA Insights
Empowering Action – How to start an environment and sustainability team in your law firm.
By Lauren Spencer, Manager at Fragomen.
Before diving into the steps for starting an Environment and Sustainability Team, or ‘green team’, it’s important to define what a green team is.
At Fragomen, our green team began in our UK office when a group of employees passionate about sustainability came together to explore ways to make our office more eco-friendly. That’s exactly what a green team is – a group of like-minded employees working towards a shared goal of creating a more sustainable workplace.
So, how can you start a green team in your organisation?
- Find interested team members
Start by gathering colleagues who share an interest in sustainability. Spread the word in a way that suits your workplace – send out an email, post on internal communication channels or even put up a poster (just remember to recycle it afterwards!).
If initial responses are low, you may need to take a more active approach. Speak with colleagues, bring it up in team meetings or ask managers to nominate a representative from their department. Having a diverse team with members from different areas of the company is key to making a greater impact.
Key departments to involve:
- Office Services and Facilities: They can drive change by choosing eco-friendly suppliers and improving energy efficiency
- Finance: Sustainability efforts often involve budget considerations, and having finance onboard can help secure funding for green initiatives
A well-rounded team ensures that sustainability becomes a company-wide initiative rather than a niche interest.
- Start Small
Once the team is in place, use your first meeting to brainstorm quick, achievable wins. What small changes require minimal cost and effort?
At Fragomen, our first steps involved reviewing office consumables and making eco-friendly swaps. We switched to eco-friendly toilet paper, eco-friendly cleaning supplies, ethical tea and coffee brands, recycled printer paper, and greener stationery suppliers. Once this conversation starts, you’ll find endless opportunities for improvement.
Starting with small, visible changes build momentum. When employees see the results-such as greener products in the office- it creates excitement and encourages wider engagement.
To maintain momentum, schedule regular meetings (monthly or bimonthly) and set a structured agenda. This keeps your team focused and ensures meaningful progress towards sustainability goals.
- Educate and Engage Employees
A green team’s impact grows when the wider workforce gets involved. The more employees connect with sustainability efforts, the more likely they are to adopt eco-friendly habits in their daily lives.
Interactive events and hands-on activities are among the best ways to engage colleagues.
At Fragomen, we hosted:
- Workshops on eco-friendly Christmas decorations: Teaching employees how to create sustainable Christmas decorations using recycled materials
- Clothes swap shops: Encouraging staff to refresh their wardrobe sustainably by swapping clothes instead of buying new ones
- Halloween costume swaps for colleagues’ children: Helping parents reduce waste and save money by exchanging pre-loved costumes
- Volunteering days – Giving employees opportunities to support community gardens and local woodlands
- Plants in the office: Bringing greenery into the office and promoting plant-based well-being
- Seasonal events: Consider running themed events or monthly challenges to keep employees engaged year-round. Whether it’s a ‘Plastic Free July’ challenge or a lunchtime sustainability talk, small efforts help foster an eco-friendly culture
- Engage Senior Leadership
Securing senior leadership involvement is crucial for a green team to gain traction. Leadership advocates ensure sustainability initiatives are taken seriously and integrated into broader company goals. Without top-down support, green teams often struggle to gain momentum, as great ideas risk being overlooked or deprioritised. Engaging leadership early helps teams drive meaningful change with the backing needed to turn ideas into action.
- Measure Success and Keep Growing
Track progress by setting measurable goals and celebrating achievements. Recognising success keeps motivation high and encourages long-term commitment from employees.
The Road to Green Teams
Starting a green team is a powerful way to make a difference in your workplace. With the right support, a clear vision and a team of passionate individuals, you can drive meaningful change and create a more sustainable work environment.
Fragomen is a global immigration firm with nearly 6,000 professionals and support staff across more than 60 offices worldwide.
by Beth Salt | Feb 5, 2025 | Members News
Congratulations to Ashurst LLP who now have validated science-based targets. Ashurst commits to reduce absolute scope 1, 2 and business travel emissions by 42% by 2030 from a 2023 baseline year. Ashurst further commits that by 2029, 85% of its purchased goods and services emissions will come from suppliers that have set science-based targets.
This news follows publication of their inaugural Responsible Business Report in 2024.
by Beth Salt | Feb 5, 2025 | LSA Insights
The Launch of the LSA’s Nature and Biodiversity Working Group (by Jenni Ramos)
The Legal Sustainability Alliance has hosted several workshops on biodiversity and nature in recent years, with a particular focus on what it means for lawyers. Our 2024 summer event “A legal lifeline for nature” featured Clare Brook (CEO of Blue Marine) in discussion with Sharif Shivji KC (co-author of the legal opinion Nature-related risks and directors’ duties under the law of England and Wales).
Many assume that the intersection between law and nature is found primarily in litigation cases such as those pursued by Blue Marine Foundation, environmental law practice or planning law and biodiversity net gain regulations.
While these are important areas, the relevance of nature and biodiversity to many members of the LSA falls outside the sphere of environmental and planning law and emerges from the ‘business case for biodiversity’. The legal opinion described above found that nature-related risks and opportunities are highly relevant to the duties of company directors to act with care and promote the success of their company. This is due to the global recognition that biodiversity loss and ecosystem degradation pose financial risks to the entire economy and the companies and financial institutions within it. This places it firmly on the agenda of lawyers who advise companies across all practice areas. It is an emerging area of law that most lawyers are either unaware of, or only just beginning to grapple with.
Nature-related risks include physical and transition (including legal) risks. They can manifest in procurement and supply chain issues, strategic nature-related litigation (including cases relating to anti-money laundering, greenwashing and financial misrepresentation), insurance risk assessment and compliance with corporate and financial sustainability reporting and due diligence frameworks.
Nature-related risk is often viewed as a future concern or merely a compliance issue with incoming reporting regimes. Whilst the World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Report has in recent years consistently listed biodiversity as a top five risk over the next ten years, this framing of it being a future not immediate risk is misleading. The UK legal opinion (written by leading barristers primarily specialising in corporate and financial law) emphasised that a company’s nature-related dependencies or impacts had the potential to affect a company’s short term interests as well as its long term financial success. Nature related risks can be both acute and chronic in character and have the ability to manifest in cascading and compounding chains of events which could manifest rapidly in the short term.
The LSA is launching a Nature and Biodiversity Working Group to discuss how nature-related risks and their associated reporting regimes will affect member firms and clients. Members can explore issues they are facing, discuss where nature-related risks sit on their firm’s agenda and how it integrates with existing work on climate risk, sustainability reporting and supply chain due diligence. Members will lead the group’s direction, fostering knowledge sharing, identifying practical insights and potential outcomes.
As chair of the working group, I will be facilitating the first session, provisionally on 25th February at 12.30pm. Please email [email protected] if you would like to join us.
by Beth Salt | Jan 6, 2025 | LSA Insights
This LSA lunchtime event for exec firms was a great success, with nearly 50 LSA members enjoying the in-person session on transition planning. Huge thanks to our speakers for their valuable and interesting contribution. Thanks also to Caroline May of Norton Rose Fulbright for chairing the discussion and to Sarah Hickey and Paul Davies at Latham & Watkins for generously hosting the event. We asked our speakers for their key takeaways, listed below.
Speakers:
Thomas Hale and Emma Lecavalier, Blavatnik School of Government at the University of Oxford
Ashleigh Lee, City of London, UK Transition Finance Market Review
Ira Poensgen, LSE GRI, International Transition Plan Network
Takeaways:
Ira Poensgen, LSE GRI, International Transition Plan Network
– The Transition Plan Taskforce was set up in March 2022 with a mandate from the UK Government to bring together leaders from industry, academia, and regulators to develop good practice for transition plan disclosures.
– Key deliverables from the TPT include its Disclosure Framework, sector-specific guidance, a paper on legal considerations for transition plans, as well as technical mappings to various other standards and frameworks.
– As of June 2024, the IFRS Foundation has assumed responsibility for the TPT’s disclosure-specific materials. This transition represents a significant milestone in global efforts to harmonise transition plan disclosures.
– The TPT wrapped up in October 2024. In its final report, TPT recommended four areas for future efforts:
- Building market capabilities, practice and sharing experiences
- Developing enabling tools and driving thought leadership
- Ensuring that transition plans are integrated into decision-making: a) C-Suites and boards: Using transition plans as a change management tool. b) Investors and lenders: Enabling risk assessment, risk pricing, and informed capital allocation. c) Policymakers and regulatory authorities: Understanding transition trajectories and informing decision-making
- Increasing global consistency in transition planning norms and expectations.
– The team behind the TPT Secretariat has launched the new International Transition Plan Network to support the development of global norms for transition plans and planning.
Emma Lecavalier, Blavatnik School of Government at the University of Oxford
– Transition planning regulation is diverse: some regulation and policy targets corporate actors, but other rules use transition planning to coordinate across government or to shift sectoral performance (i.e. in energy, transportation, finance, agriculture).
– Transition planning is a valuable tool as governments look to organize economy-wide net zero transition. However, we need to be aware of risks that multiple rules can create friction or redundancy.
– Across all types of transition planning—corporate, national, and sectoral—we should be mindful of good practices such as: pairing disclosure with transition planning to enhance transparency and accountability; using third party verification and assurance to improve the data underpinning transition plans; and mainstreaming transition planning into spending (i.e. public and private procurement).
Ashleigh Lee, City of London, UK Transition Finance Market Review
– Companies and governments will require credible transition finance to deliver on decarbonisation commitments and meet Paris Agreement goals.
– The UK is uniquely positioned to become a leading hub for the transition finance market and use its leadership position for financial and professional services to accelerate the global transition. McKinsey & Company estimate that enabling the net-zero transition could bring in £1 trillion to UK businesses by 2030.
– The UK’s Transition Finance Market Review (TFMR) provides a framework to scale the market for transition finance in the UK and globally. Central to the findings of the Review are recommendations on how to unlock the required levels of finance by creating the right policies, pathways and signals for investment through collaboration between government, investors, business and civil society.
– Key recommendations of the Review include:
a) National sectoral transition planning and policy certainty: Scaling transition finance will require a greater level of granularity in sectoral transition pathways, greater collaboration with industry, and a greater level of coordination across government. The Review recommends a commitment to resourcing the Net Zero Council to deliver this granularity.
b) Catalytic capital and activity-level de-risking: Reaching commercial maturity for emerging transition activities will require effective policy, catalytic public capital, and public-private innovation. The Review recommends establishing a Transition Finance Lab to develop and test targeted financial solutions to tackle these challenges.
c) Transition planning and the supporting ecosystem: To move towards general-purpose transition finance predicated on a credible transition plan, the Review recommends mandatory Transition Plan Taskforce-aligned transition plan development and disclosure, and an evolution in the supporting data, assessment, verification, and assurance of transition plans.
d) Embedding credibility and integrity: The Review adopts a Transition Finance Classification System and proposes Guidelines for Credible Transition Finance. A principles-based approach to transition finance aids coalescence around core elements whilst enabling sufficient flexibility in other markets including emerging markets and for SMEs.
e) Delivering a roadmap for transition finance: Establish a Transition Finance Council to ensure delivery of the Review’s recommendations, as well as supporting capacity building, collaboration, and coordination.
For more information on any of the topics listed above, or to find out more please email the LSA manager Camilla on [email protected].
