UK firm Mishcon de Reya has spearheaded the Greener Litigation pledge, which aims to make the disputes process more environmentally friendly. Alexander Rhodes, partner and head of the firm’s ESG-focused practice, Mishcon Purpose, says the next step involves looking overseas.
ALB: What does it mean for firms to take the pledge, and can you give us some context around the pledge?
RHODES: Greener Litigation is a pledge to take steps to reduce the impact of litigation on the environment and in particular to align with restricting global warming to one and a half degrees. This is very much an open, shared industry initiative. It was launched by a founding group of 11 firms — us and 10 others. We’ve now got 56 members who have signed up. Although this started as an initiative among English litigation professionals, there is interest in many different jurisdictions to join, so we’re working with colleagues in other countries to look at setting up national chapters of the initiative.
You could say the Greener Litigation Pledge is broken into three parts. One is making the pledge to reduce the environmental impact to align with one and a half degrees. Secondly, it’s to take practical steps, and the third part, which is important, is engaging with courts and other stakeholders in the litigation process to get them engaged with trying to achieve that systemic change.
The pledge involves taking practical steps in the way that litigation is conducted — so a committing firm will change its practices around the way it conducts litigation and take practical steps to reduce environmental footprint.
Considering, wherever possible the use of electronic communication and documentation as opposed to printed documentation. The possibility of using electronic submissions to the court as opposed to paper submissions. The opportunity of using remote hearings instead of physical hearings. And to think about reducing travel and using greener ways of transportation to get to and from court.
ALB: What prompted you to develop the pledge?
RHODES: At Mishcon de Reya we’re very focused on how the law and lawyers can play their part to accelerate the transition towards sustain-ability, and in particular, towards decarbonising the global economy. We see the law as an incredibly powerful tool and can be used to achieve that, and should be used to do that. That’s from our firm’s position.
The trigger for us to start working on this was, as with many other initiatives, the COVID-19 pandemic. The courts suddenly couldn’t function as they were typically functioning, and they had to make emergency changes to rules of procedure for litigation.
And after a year or so, the Civil Justice Commission carried out a consultation to see what practitioners thought about what was working and what wasn’t working under these new provisional systems.
We made a submission in relation to two things — in relation to climate change, and in relation to air pollution, and the Civil Justice Commission report identified the impact of climate change in particular as an area of urgent priority for further investigation.
So that’s what we took as our trigger. We also drew inspiration from our colleagues in the international arbitration community, where there was already a Greener Arbitration initiative. The approach they took on that front seemed very sensible, so we spent some time working with them. The approach we are taking with litigation should sit alongside the approach taken for arbitration.
ALB: What impact do you want the Greener Litigation pledge to have?
RHODES: There are two goals — there’s a short-term goal and longer-term goal. The immediate initiative is to build a body of like-minded practitioners who are actively committed to changing the way they practice litigation, which means we can immediately begin working to reduce the environmental impact that we have. So that is something that can be done quickly.
The longer goal, which is to catalyse policy and procedure change, to imbed meaningful, permanent change in the way that litigation is carried out. So that means working with the government, working with courts, and the various bodies to change the rules and the way we do litigation.
One of my heroes is Jane Goodall and what she has always said is “in the face of overwhelming, massive challenges like climate change and environmental damage and biodiversity loss, the thing to do is to start locally, and recognise what steps you can take.” I think for us as lawyers, the important thing to do is ask where we can have a meaningful impact — and that is in the use of the law and in the way that we work. This pledge is a small but important way in which we can change the way we work.
