Sustainability

Climate change is among the most pressing concerns of the twenty-first century and one which is having an increasingly broad range of impacts. Unchecked it has the potential to fundamentally disrupt the world’s ecosystems, with far-reaching consequences for both human beings and the natural environment. Action is needed on a global scale - from every country, government, business and individual.

Carbon neutral

We believe that steps must be taken swiftly to tackle the climate crisis. This is why we have offset all emissions from our offices, our business travel and our employee and partner commuting with immediate effect. While offsetting alone is not the solution, it will mitigate our impact while we pursue longer-term systemic change.

Working towards net zero by 2030

In recognising that the business community has a pivotal role to play in the drive towards greater sustainability, we have committed to recording net zero emissions across our entire organisation by 2030. We are working to reduce our emissions rapidly throughout our value chain, and will offset any residual emissions. This will include all emissions from our own activities and our supply chain.

Our operations

Within our business, we have undertaken a thorough analysis of our operational carbon footprint through our accreditation with the Planet Mark. We use the Greenhouse Gas Protocol as a framework for measuring and reporting our emissions.

Our operational emissions for the financial year 2018/19 were as follows:

Having set this baseline, we have calculated the level of emissions required for our firm to operate in line with the global emissions ceiling which is projected to limit climate change to 1.5 degrees of warming. This level of emissions reduction has been assessed using the methodology devised by the Science Based Targets initiative. We need to deliver a 46.2% reduction in our scope 1 and 2 emissions by 2030 to meet the requisite levels but are setting ourselves ambitious targets and hope to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions further and faster than that.

Energy efficiency and emissions reduction schemes

Our position on carbon offsetting is clear - it is not a solution to the climate crisis by itself, but rather a useful tool to support carbon emissions reductions and to alleviate our immediate carbon footprint. Our goal remains to reduce our underlying emissions beyond the level consistent with 1.5 degrees of warming by 2030.

We plan to reach this goal through the following initiatives:

• The Legal Renewables Initiative – we have committed to switch our electricity contracts to 100% renewable energy by 2025. This alone will reduce our emissions by 60% of our baseline footprint.
• Sustainable travel policy – in 2018/19 business travel accounted for 30% of our overall carbon footprint. Therefore our travel, in particular internationally, needs to reduce. Our new sustainable travel policy will help balance the commercial requirement for travel with the urgent need to lower our carbon emissions.
• Environment champions – set up in 2019, these groups are supporting change within our offices to educate and influence colleagues. We now have over 40 members of staff acting as environment champions across our seven UK locations.
• Firmwide energy and resource efficiency initiatives – we have launched a comprehensive programme of work to address inefficiency and waste across the business. This covers everything from energy consumption and use of natural resources to identifying changes to the on-site physical infrastructure needed to adopt more sustainable practices.
• Supply chain emissions – we are developing a strategic approach to engaging with our suppliers to reduce the emissions linked to the provision of goods and services to the firm. Sustainability will become a key factor in all our procurement decision-making in order to drive down emissions.
• Data quality and coverage
  In addition to rapidly decarbonising our business model, we are also working hard to extend the boundaries covered in our carbon footprinting and reporting. Year-on-year, we will seek to include more data within our reporting to ensure it presents a comprehensive picture of the environmental impact of the firm’s full value chain and not just our operational footprint.

Our strategic focus

We understand that our response to climate change over the next decade will define our future and are pursuing a varied programme designed to achieve best environmental practice. In addition, our strategy will be to engage with and support our clients as they navigate the risks and opportunities posed by climate change. More about our work with our clients can be found here.