How Can Law Firms Become More Sustainable?

In the current climate, environmental sustainability is a pressing issue in our everyday life – and this must be reflected in the way the corporate world maps its carbon footprint.

Sustainability must be embedded within the heart of a law firm to ensure that it can maintain a low carbon business model to do its part in saving the planet (and money!). It also improves the firm's corporate image in the public eye because who wouldn’t want to work for a sustainable law firm?

There are many ways law firms can become more sustainable, as the world strives to reduce its carbon footprint. These include:

Travel

Law firms can reduce their carbon footprint by rethinking their modes of travel for employees. For instance, a business class flight from London to New York produces 2930kg of carbon dioxide emissions – and that’s just for a one-way ticket. This has the same carbon footprint as approximately 35,732 plastic water bottles. One up-side to the pandemic has been that businesses are now conducting meetings over video chat, as opposed to meeting in person, and studies have shown how this can help to reduce carbon emissions by 94%. 

Reducing Wastage

Law firms and corporate businesses in general should also be shifting their focus to their resource usage. The language understood best by business is money, and to conserve money and energy usage, companies should look to switch to a green energy provider. Doing so would provide an inexhaustible source of energy, and promote cleaner air, in a step towards net-zero emissions (whilst also generating good PR for the business).

Another example of conserving energy in the office would include having motion sensored lights with LED bulbs, as this ensures that energy from the bulbs is only being used at necessary times within the day in specific areas of the office. Likewise, having a paperless office ensures that paper waste remains at a minimum. This is beneficial for corporate companies as everything can be stored on a hard drive to prevent important files from being lost and they can be accessed by everyone in the team.

Legal Sustainability Alliance (LSA)

Over 90 law firms in the UK have signed up to the LSA, to manage and measure their carbon emissions, committing to becoming net-zero. The LSA was founded in 2007 and is chaired by Caroline May (Norton Rose) and Matt Sparkes (Linklaters), who set out to encourage firms to hit a target of 100% renewable energy sources by 2025. They provide firms with a strategic, science-based intervention, working in partnership with Carbon Intelligence to aid in reducing their emissions.

As the corporate market continues to rapidly increase, it is important that companies in high growth areas with high volumes of employees contribute towards the global target of reducing carbon footprints to set examples to smaller companies and work together to save the planet.

Are We a Sustainable Business?

Currently here at Interlink, we have made some small but significant steps to become more sustainable as a business. We have converted to a paperless system and installed energy saving lights to reduce wastage, in addition to recycling our old computer equipment to those in need of better resources. However, there is still more we all can do!