Biglaw lawyers aren’t usually who we think of when it comes to saving the environment. But maybe embracing the hybrid work model can help Biglaw — and its clients — do their part.
Biglaw’s struggles with remote work policies have revolved around quality of life and the future of the profession. The pandemic proved that midlevel and senior associates were both happier and more productive at home, but younger associates struggled without in-office soft training. If firms have to respect that the five-day office week won’t work without associates immediately calling their recruiters, maybe there’s a way to package the hybrid reality of hard-working homebound associates into a product that clients actually want.
Dentons, the reigning world’s largest law firm (even after cutting ties with its China affiliate), recently announced that its UK, Ireland, and Middle East region now offers an end-to-end “low carbon service” — allowing clients to buy the assurance that their work wouldn’t carry the carbon footprint of printers, or paper signatures or, importantly, commuting lawyers!
The pilot engagement with Defra Legal Advisors grew out of collaboration between the client and internal sustainability specialists at the firm to identify factors associated with a standard matter to establish an emissions baseline and then determine what changes had to be implemented to decarbonize the service and a means to collect data to calculate the scope of the reductions.
The result was a bespoke platform called Legal Front Door tailored to the client to simplify instruction submissions and approvals, creating an automated workflow allowing Dentons to triage and assign incoming instructions in less than an hour. Dashboards were created allowing Defra to monitor matter statuses and updates, offering 78% lower carbon intensity than emails and allowed Defra Legal Advisors better visibility and control over legal spend.
According to the firm, “Ultimately, Dentons was able to bring down its carbon emissions associated with the service to Defra Legal Advisors by circa 120kg C02e, equivalent to 14,597 smartphones charges, reducing the carbon footprint by 44%.”
There’s obviously a lot more to this initiative than just “working from home.” But as LegalCheek noted, one of the key components of the program (programme?) was a commitment that lawyers would work 40 percent of their billable hours from home.
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To save you all the math: working 40 percent of billable hours from home means a three-day in the office week.
That means Dentons took the three-day Biglaw consensus — the one that a lot of firm leadership chafes against and some, perhaps ill-advisedly, hope to reverse — and integrated it into an affirmatively attractive client offering. Working from home not as a quality of life issue for the associate, but as an environmental selling point for clients focused on meeting net zero goals.
And clients do care about this stuff. Just because Republicans threaten to punish corporations for taking environmentally friendly action in the US doesn’t mean participants in the global marketplace can ignore ducking climate benchmarks. There’s still a market out there — even for US firms — to reach corporate clients looking to shave carbon output. The momentum behind work from home just might afford Biglaw an opening to seize that market.
Caroline Connolly, Environmental Sustainability Manager at Dentons, explained:
Many of our clients are committed to minimising their emissions and negative impact on the planet, and we have identified how we can help them achieve this, simply by adjusting how we provide services to them.
We believe we are among the first major law firms to offer a genuinely low carbon service and are proud to demonstrate that law firms can make a meaningful positive impact on the climate, in balance with their commercial aims.
It’s not a program for every client. Some clients — who may or may not have deep exposure in the commercial real estate market — have demanded their outside counsel round up all their attorneys and get them back to the office… the larger the (physical) footprint the better. But many clients don’t care how the work gets done as long as it gets done correctly and efficiently. And if all else equal, they can boast about saving the world along the way, all the better.
Dentons launches ‘low carbon service’ with lawyers working from home, e-signatures and no printing [LegalCheek]
Earlier: Latham Calls Lawyers Back To Office, Even Though Midlevels Sit In Open Cubicles NOW
Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter or Bluesky if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.