Sustainability
Protecting tomorrow for everyoneIn today’s world, ESG issues are of critical importance to business. We’re helping our clients transition to, and thrive in, a more sustainable future. We ask tough questions about purpose and transparency and find the answers together.
We’re also looking for opportunities to integrate sustainability into our governance, decision-making and operations.
How we’re transforming our business
In 2022 we completed our first double-materiality assessment. This helped us to identify our first set of 15 material sustainability issues. Our plans continue to evolve and we will revisit this exercise. Our strategic priorities are to decarbonise our business operations and develop a climate transition plan, become a workplace where everyone can thrive, take action on social impact and be a trusted ethical business partner.
Reaching net zero by 2040
Taking action on the climate crisis and biodiversity collapse is a business and social imperative. The global economy is transitioning to a de-carbonised future.
How fast we act and how quickly we integrate this transition into our business model will play an important part in determining our future growth. The same is true for our clients and entire economies.
This is a system-wide change that will reshape how all of us do business. That’s why we are working to understand how we can further integrate climate risks and opportunities into our business strategy, and helping our clients do the same.
Collaboration plays a crucial role in climate action. We're a founding member of the Legal Sustainability Alliance and the Net Zero Lawyers Alliance. JP Douglas-Henry, our Managing Director for Sustainability and Resilience, sits on NZLA's steering committee. NZLA is committed to climate action, promoting sustainability reporting and sharing best practice in the legal sector.
In 2023 we founded the Legal Charter 1.5 alongside seven other law firms with offices in the UK. This group seeks to galvanise the legal sector’s role in achieving the Paris goals.
We’re a founding member of the Legal Taskforce for the Sustainable Markets Initiative (SMI), a leading project to build a coordinated global effort to enable the private sector to accelerate the transition to a sustainable future.
We're also a founding member of Global Alliance of Impact Lawyers, a community of legal leaders using the practice of law to have a positive impact on people and the planet, and to accelerate the just transition.
We have a near-term target to halve our carbon footprint in all three scopes by 2030 against a 2019 baseline. We also have a net zero target to reduce all three scopes by 90% by 2040 from a 2019 baseline, and to neutralise the remaining residual emissions at the net zero target year, 2040, through carbon removal. Both of these targets follow the methodology of the Science-Based Targets initiative.
Decarbonising our business
To decarbonise our business, we’re focused on transforming it in five areas:
- implementing our Thoughtful Travel campaign to reduce emissions by 75% by 2030
- working with suppliers to reduce emissions on our supply chain by 25% by 2030
- switching to renewable electricity across Europe by 2025, and all offices by 2030
- optimising energy use in our offices
- designing future workspaces with sustainability and health in mind
Our biggest potential contribution to global decarbonisation efforts is by helping clients on their own net zero journeys. We’re ensuring our approach to client work is aligned with our climate ambition, including how we map and measure advised emissions as we develop our climate transition plan.
Our environmental actions are aligned with locally and internationally recognised standards and initiatives, including:
- certification to ISO 14001, ISO 50001 and the Carbon Trust’s Route to Net Zero standard
- the UN Global Compact
- The Legal Renewables Initiative in the UK
- Business Ambition for 1.5°C.
Building an inclusive culture
We’re all different, and those differences are our greatest strength. Everyone should feel valued for who they are. We take meaningful action to create an inclusive culture in our business, and make a positive difference to our communities. We’ve made progress, but there’s a lot more to do. The legal sector still isn’t diverse enough.
Firms that fail to take action to improve diversity aren’t just reinforcing social inequalities in the legal profession and wider society. They’re also putting at risk their innovation and competitiveness. Our materiality assessment ranked diversity, mobility and inclusion as our second-highest-rated issue.
Enabling a just, stable and sustainable society
Law firms can have an impact on society. This can be through the advice they give to organisations, businesses and individuals to solve legal challenges, their contribution to the economy, their supply chain, and their recruitment. They may also contribute to programmes run by not-for-profit organisations for the greater good.
It’s important that we understand our societal impacts so that we know where to focus and improve our efforts. Measuring societal impact can be challenging. Unlike environmental impact, which can be measured by science-based targets, societal impact is not often measured in a standardised way. It can also depend on specific contexts.
We exist in several geographies where societies differ and face unique challenges. This means our impacts vary depending on how and where we do things. Another key challenge is that we don’t always have clear visibility on the impact of our work. In the case of our pro bono strategy, for example, the impact may not be immediately obvious and could come in the long term.
This means understanding our societal impact is an ongoing process.
Run in the UK, Kenya, China, New Zealand and Australia, Head Start supports talented young people who face social, economic or cultural barriers to entering and succeeding in law. Head Start students are recruited using evidence-based social equality criteria. Through internships, skills training and mentoring, students build confidence, create networks and gain knowledge. Head Start can last from 18 months to five years, depending on the location.
Launched in 2017, our Global Scholarships Program nurtures future lawyers and builds legal capacity in developing countries. Delivered with the Bingham Centre for the Rule of Law and the Saïd Business School, the programme contributes to embedding the rule of law in underserved regions.
Each year, the firm supports students of the programme in Africa, South and West Asia, the South Pacific and Latin America. Over their bespoke two-year scholarship, students have their full tuition paid and receive mentoring and training to develop their skills, confidence and networks.
Integrating ESG into how we govern our business
ESG issues present major risks and opportunities to companies, and leading global corporations recognise that profit and purpose are interdependent. For businesses to be successful in the long term, they must also deliver social value. There’s a growing expectation for all businesses – including law firms – to make a positive contribution to society and the environment, and to report on their impact.
As a professional services organisation, our business is focused on delivering for our clients. Our client work is also where we have the biggest opportunity to drive positive social and environmental change. As with other sectors, advisors to business are under increasing pressure to account for the difference their advice makes in terms of sustainability. So integrating ESG risk governance into our client offering is strategically important to our firm.
We’re committed to fully integrating ESG considerations into our mainstream business risk management processes, with a special focus on our approach to client work. Like many organisations, we’re exploring how our governance structures can best achieve this – and where we need to make changes.
Reporting on sustainability
Our aim is to help drive best practice in the legal sector for sustainability reporting. We know that credibility depends on transparency, so we aim to give a clear and balanced account of our performance. This means we're not just highlighting our achievements, but also being up-front about the challenges we face and areas for improvement. We recognise there are still gaps in our reporting and we'll explain our progress in resolving them year on year.
Our reporting approach aligns with major international standards and frameworks. This includes the Global Reporting Initiative Standards (GRI), World Economic Forum Stakeholder Capitalism Metrics, and Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB) Standards. See the relevant index tables in our Data Pack for more detail.
We have also begun aligning our reporting approach to the European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS). This report partially aligns to them. However, this report is not yet in scope for CSRD reporting, so this is part of our effort to begin aligning early. See the ESRS E1 and ESRS S1 indices in our Data Pack.
We will be using the Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) framework and the Transition Plan Taskforce (TPT) Framework to develop our climate transition plan, although this reporting falls outside the scope of this Sustainability Report. For more detail on the standards guiding this report, see page 36.
We welcome feedback on sustainability report. We're not just saying this, it takes a lot of work and consultation to produce a report which we think is credible, and it's ever evolving, so please contact us with suggestions or questions responsiblebusiness@dlapiper.com.
