Where to find sustainability help - or not

What are lawyers’ professional associations doing to help lawyers be sustainable?

The answer depends on where you do business. Search for “sustainability” on the website of the NSW Law Society  or the Law Council of Australia and you come up with a few articles from journals but no resources that are current and regularly updated. The Law Institute of Victoria on the other hand has established the Green Practice Project, which aims to promote awareness and uptake of green initiatives in the legal profession by networking and training lawyers interested in sustainability to improve their professional development and enhance innovation.

Law firms can download the  Green Practice Guide “How to become a green practice” and there is a regular Green Practice column in the Law Institute Journal.

The Queensland Law Society grumbles “It’s not easy being green” but lists its own achievements on its website which it says  will hopefully inspire members to institute similar methods in their own organisations. Hope is not enough, QLS. What about some tools and training to help members get started?

Perhaps these bodies think sustainability is more relevant to legal practice management than the practice of law. However the Australian Legal Practice Management Association website does not have any information either.

Overseas, the American Bar Association has a page on resources for a sustainable law firm. It includes a model sustainability policy. The preamble states:

“ It is in the best interests of our law organization and society as a whole that our organization move along the path to sustainability, that is, the so-called Triple Bottom Line of social, economic and environmental responsibility. To that end, we will strive to achieve the following vision of performance, publicly communicate this commitment, and periodically report our progress and challenges in fulfilling it. To identify practices and programs to help implement this policy, we will give due consideration to the relevant policies, programs and other tools of the ABA and state and local law and governmental organizations, and will publicly cite in our policy below or elsewhere those major initiatives we embrace.”

It is not clear how many firms have adopted the policy. However, according to Law Professor John Dernbach, a US law office can enrol in the ABA-EPA Law Office Climate Challenge by adopting specified best practices for paper management or by joining EPA’s Waste- Wise program, Green Power Partnership, or Energy Star program.

The site also has links to law firms which have committed to sustainability, links to articles and a blog ( some of these links were broken) and books on legal technology ( one supposes technology is seen as an alternative to excessive paper use).

The Greenworks  site is managed by Linda Brughelli who served as the first chair of the California Department of Justice “Green Office-DOJ” effort from 2008 to 2011 and has given talks on sustainable practices in law firms. It has some useful information and gives a rare insight into sustainability in government law offices.

There are two honourable exceptions to the rule in NSW. The Environmental Defender’s Office, which has recently suffered attacks on its funding for daring to take on Government approved projects and winning, has some clear and useful resources, including a fact sheet on how small offices can reduce their carbon emissions.

The Office of Environment and Heritage operates the Sustainability Advantage Program. When you sign up to Sustainability Advantage you get assistance to help you evaluate your current environmental performance and rank possible initiatives. You work on selected projects tailored to your business such as staff engagement, resource efficiency and carbon management. Coleman Greig Lawyers have been able to promote their sustainability credentials, cut electricity use by 6 per cent and cut paper consumption by 25 per cent.