A Call For Greater Transparency from Law Students for Climate Accountability

By Haley Czarnek. Haley served on LSCA’s first National Leadership Committee as a 3L at the University of Alabama, and graduated in May 2022. Haley has since begun developing their role as LSCA’s first National Director, and is excited to support the committee and student organizers as they build a movement to change the culture of the legal profession.

The legal industry benefits tremendously from a lack of transparency. The average person, certainly in the Global North but frequently beyond, has decent familiarity with oil giants like Chevron, Exxon, Shell, BP, and Saudi AramCo. Moreover, many people associate certain companies with specific catastrophes, such as BP’s Deepwater Horizon spill in 2010. But even global behemoth Kirkland and Ellis is likely to be known by a relatively small section of the population, given the billions of dollars they rake in annually. Spectacularly bad press about Jones Day’s involvement with some of Donald Trump’s many legal cases stuck in the public eye more strongly than any other BigLaw representation I can recall—but it remains a multi-billion dollar firm.

Law firms are thus able to facilitate many hundreds of billions in fossil fuel transactions with little to no public scrutiny, in spite of the critical role lawyers play in the process of development and extraction. Many law firms also lobby for weaker regulations, and dozens of the largest firms in the world lend their litigation services to defend Big Oil’s profit margins in court, often against communities they’ve poisoned. Of course, this is all in addition to the oil majors’ sizable in-house teams. If every law firm in the world dropped their fossil fuel clients, those companies would still have better access to representation than most frontline communities that have been harmed by dangerous fossil fuel infrastructure—to say nothing of all those suffering from the present-day effects of climate change.

It might seem strange, then, that I belong to an organization, Law Students for Climate Accountability (LSCA), that is focused on getting firms to do exactly that: drop their fossil fuel clients. What’s the point, if those clients will always have representation anyways?

My organizing journey has its roots in Alabama’s labor movement, and I’ve been privileged to know incredible people who are fighting David-and-Goliath style battles every day. Of the many lessons I’ve learned from them, two are particularly relevant here. First, it matters how we do (and don’t!) use our labor. Workers that are very organized can use petitions, pickets, slowdowns, sickouts, and strikes, while even small groups can leverage whistleblowing to hold their management to account for malfeasance. In the legal profession, students can also play a potent role by collectively making it known that they care about their future and understand that firms’ fossil fuel work is endangering that future. Because the product that law firms sell is their talent, law students and associates have more leverage than many of them realize at present.

The second lesson that sticks out to me is the power of a supermajority. Good organizers don’t spend all their time talking to the most hostile segment of the group they’re engaging. Instead, they start by seeking out two categories of people: the individuals that are most primed to join them, and the leaders that are capable of bringing the largest number of people along. If they are successful at recruiting those two groups, hostilities are likely to soften, even if they don’t abate. Regardless, a supermajority can achieve big wins in spite of naysayers. And because the legal industry is incredibly gatekept and elite, a cultural shift is likely to ripple out to every hall of power. It is my firm belief that even this conservative and profit-driven profession can build a supermajority of people who are self-interested in a habitable world, and willing to not just turn down fossil fuels work, but also to tell their peers they shouldn’t spend their valuable time exacerbating climate chaos, either.

These are some of the principles that animate my work with LSCA. The organization grew out of protests in early 2020, with students at Yale, Harvard, NYU and Michigan showing up recruitment events hosted by Paul Weiss calling on them to #DropExxon, which has long been on the firm’s client list. It was unusual in such a risk-averse field and drew media attention, but to date, Paul Weiss has yet to respond.

Determined to keep momentum, a subset of the protestors decided to expand their focus and ultimately created the first Law Firm Climate Change Scorecard as part of a report that outlined the critical role that lawyers play in maintaining and expanding fossil fuel infrastructure. They decided to name the project Law Students for Climate Accountability, but at the time they chose the name, had no idea their work would go farther than that. After its publication in October 2020, the flurry of attention that resulted—drawing the eyes of reporters, academics, activists, and of course law students and lawyers—made it clear that this information was both crucial and not available elsewhere. Thus LSCA was born, and the original crew set out to find a group of student leaders from across the US to formalize the group and chart its course.

Around that time, I was beginning to think much more seriously about the scale of the climate crisis. I was born in California, and the state’s record-setting 2020 wildfire season made it clear to me that climate migration was already occurring, and not just in the Global South. I started to wonder incessantly about the fine line between habitable and uninhabitable land, and how many people were already living in that gray zone but still rebuilding, either out of love for their home or a lack of other options or both. I decided to organize a few virtual panels exploring climate migration, and that ended up being one of the best decisions of my life. It was through that little conference that I met Camila Bustos and Alisa White, both Yale Law students who were beginning to turn the Scorecard into a national organization. I eventually became one of LSCA’s inaugural student leaders, and spent that year working alongside more than a dozen other students to determine what, exactly, LSCA should be.

Over the course of the year, we worked to release a new Scorecard and make it an annual publication; we restructured our student committee and recruited new leaders; and we landed on our mission and vision:

LSCA activates and mobilizes the power of law students to transform the legal industry’s role from exacerbating climate injustice to meaningfully supporting a just transition away from fossil fuels. We aspire to move legal ethics and practice towards a just transition for our planet, in solidarity with frontline communities, to build an equitable and sustainable world in our lifetimes.

That year, we also successfully raised enough funds to expand our work and bring on our first staff person—which, I am incredibly privileged to say, ending up being me. It’s been a whirlwind journey developing my role alongside incredible colleagues who have become my friends. I deeply cherish our commitment to building an internal culture that is strong and supportive enough to counter the hegemonic forces in the legal industry that have long stymied progress in favor of profit. It is that commitment, I believe, that has kept us going for several years now, and has helped us connect with an ever-widening audience, including abroad.

Our strongest international interest has come from the UK, and with support from a number of academics and attorneys, we gathered together a group of students to replicate what the team was doing in the US. Last summer, they produced our first report on UK law firms, and six of those report authors have since stepped up to serve as our first UK student leaders. They are building connections with students and lawyers across the country, and we are excited to turn last year’s report into an annual production. We’re also working with a number of clinics to produce additional research that can be used to spur organizing, and have already had the chance to connect with a number of employees at major law firms. I have been heartened by the reception that our work has received in the UK, and believe our young and growing transcontinental movement is already making waves in the industry—but we need all the people power we can get.

If you’re a current or aspiring legal worker who values a consistent food supply; access to clean water; weather that doesn’t cause many thousands of excess heat deaths; and the prospect of a liveable world for future generations, I hope you’ll join us. Together, we can and will build an equitable and sustainable world in our lifetimes.

Mewburn Ellis – Our Sustainability Journey

The Revised Oxford Offsetting Principles and What They Mean for Your Firm

By Injy Johnstone, Research Associate in Net Zero Aligned Offsetting at the Sustainable Finance Group and Researcher at Oxford Net-Zero

Despite offsetting being often the major plank in the net zero planning of corporations, next to no offsetting is currently net zero. This needs to change.

We know from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that to reach net zero carbon we need to balance our residual emissions with additional removal capacity. However, the vast majority of carbon credits are dominated by projects that pay people to avoid releasing emissions, rather than actively reducing or removing them. Because it can be hard to robustly evidence that such an emission would have occurred in future, recent investigations have found that up to 90% of credits in some projects may be worthless. It’s not just the type of project that matters, but also how new it is and whether it would have occurred regardless of carbon credit financing. In 2023, some corporations were still retiring carbon credits from projects whose mitigation impact happened in 2006 or earlier. At the same time, we see funds flowing to projects that may already make economic sense already–such as installing renewable energy in most parts of the world.

The need to scale removals to meet net zero is also demonstrated by the fact that global emissions are still increasing. Indeed, based on recent estimates of global CO₂ emissions and removals, in 2023 for every 1 ton we removed, we released a further 18.5 tonnes into the atmosphere. What’s more, the vast majority of the removals, are only storing CO₂ temporarily, meaning they need to be replaced in future for us to meet net zero. It is therefore clear that the status quo of carbon offsetting is not primed for net-zero alignment.

Rather than continuing to entrench the unsustainable results of today’s offsetting the Oxford Offsetting Principles work backwards from what’s needed for net zero alignment. The four Principles are:

1. Cut emissions, ensure the environmental integrity of credits used to achieve net zero, and regularly revise your offsetting strategy as best practice evolves
2. Transition to carbon removal offsetting for any residual emissions by the global net zero target date
3. Shift to removals with durable storage (low risk of reversal) to compensate any residual emissions by the net zero target date
4. Support the development of innovative and integrated approaches to achieving net zero

Originally released in 2020, the Revised 2024 version now offers important and additional insights. It notes with concern that despite engagement in the prospect of net zero aligned offsetting since the release of the original principles, an urgent course correction of offsetting practice is needed. It further recognises that despite additional guidance on both the supply and demand aspects of the voluntary carbon market having been developed in recent years, these do not go far enough to calibrate net zero aligned offsetting strategies. The Revised Principles also add more nuance as to the vital role played by investment in nature-based solutions to protect nature in its own right separate from any potential mitigation benefits it may yield. Finally, they recognise that given the significant need to scale climate mitigation across the board, that all actors who can, should consider additional ‘beyond value chain’ investments in projects which reduce or remove emissions.

There are a number of key implications for law firms that stem from the Revised Oxford Offsetting Principles:

• As Implementors

Law firms are increasingly setting their own net-zero commitments, both as individual firms and as part of collectives such as the Net Zero Lawyers Alliance and the Legal Charter 1.5. For firms to reach such commitments there are practical steps they can take to limit their own value-chain emissions and craft a net-zero aligned offsetting strategy to address residual emissions; this being one that adheres to the environmental integrity, transparency and review standards of Principle One, invests in carbon removal offsetting, with a pathway to fully durable removals by the net zero target date in line with Principles Two and Three and considers investing in additional beyond value chain mitigation in line with Principle Four.

• As Advisors

Advised emissions are also an integral part of firms’ scope 3 emissions. As a result, they also present an avenue to implement Principle Four: innovative and integrated approaches to achieving net zero. When firms are advising clients who have or want to make net zero commitments, it is fundamental to communicate the Revised Oxford Offsetting Principles as a benchmark for net-zero aligned offsetting and–if adopted–to ensure that there is a credible pathway to the realisation of the transition to durable carbon removal for residual emissions. Indeed the Voluntary Carbon Markets Integrity Initiative recognises that companies should “seek independent legal advice on all aspects of the use of green, carbon and climate claims in the context of carbon credits in all jurisdictions…”. Firms that are equipped to provide this advice can help not only ensure that clients are advised on best-practice offsetting, but also if net zero aligned offsetting strategies are implemented correctly, it could also significantly reduce the litigation risk that clients could face when compared with the current status quo of the voluntary carbon market. It is also important as legislators are increasingly considering further measures to both reign in voluntary carbon offsetting practices and stimulate investments in carbon removal.

In this way, law firms have an integral role to play in ushering forth the era of net zero aligned offsetting. The Revised Oxford Offsetting Principles were released to assist with this. For further insights on how to operationalise these Principles, please keep an eye on the Smith School for Enterprise and the Environment’s website. If you would like to dive deeper, you can also apply to join the first-ever Oxford Programme on Net Zero Aligned Offsetting, happening in person in Oxford later this year.

The Tip of the Iceberg on International Polar Bear Day

Today is International Polar Bear Day. But polar bears are just to tip of the iceberg when it comes to climate change.

The totemic image of climate change threat is the lone polar bear adrift on a small ice flow, marooned from the main landmass and facing a perilous and uncertain future. For many it is the plight of the bear that symbolises climate change. Let’s use the Care for the Bear as a call to action.

The current estimated worldwide population of 26,000 bears is set to decline by 30% by 2030. Without action on climate change, Polar Bears International warn that we could lose all but a few polar bear populations by the end of the century.

Exacerbating this issue is the misunderstanding increased sightings around human settlements means that the populations are increasing. They aren’t. Malnourished bears spend more time on land for longer periods and are venturing into settlements where they are looking for food.

What can you and I do in our everyday city life thousands of miles from the Arctic to help stop the decline in populations? Well, the first and most obvious thing is to reduce your impact on the planet by addressing your own carbon footprint. For every tonne of CO2e you avoid putting into the atmosphere (whether by buying less, flying less, driving less, switching to a renewable energy source) you are taking an active step to halt climate change and increase the bears’ chance of survival.

Our individual footprints are important as they all add up, but greater still is the impact your law firm can have if you choose to take positive climate action.

Here are 5 things you can do if you care about the bears:

➡ Measure your carbon emissions footprint across all your operations and supply chain – scopes 1 2 & 3 ( LSA members can use the free online calculator)

➡ Set a challenging reduction, science aligned target to get your emissions down 50% by 2030

➡ Educate and inform your colleagues across the business about climate change and what it means -use The Law Society Guidance on Climate Change as a conversation starter

➡ Ask your clients how you can support their net zero transition journey – it matters to clients as much as to lawyers

➡  Identify and commit to a robust, reliable offsetting programme that will help to mitigate both your current emissions (as you journey to net zero) and all the historic emissions that have built up since the industrial revolution. Every tonne of CO2 we remove from the atmosphere and sequester counts.

⚪ Oh and one extra one – consider adopting a Polar Bear through the WWF Fund for Nature scheme – while it won’t solve the problem, it will provide vital funds to help tackle the key threats the bears face. You can adopt a bear for less than the price of a coffee each month.

With thanks to Amanda Carpenter for this rallying call to action.