You Need a Climate Lawyer: here’s why (and how we can help)

Sustainability, climate, and carbon have become increasingly technical, specialized, and regulated. That’s why you need support from a new type of legal services provider: you need a Climate Lawyer

Photo by Melissa Bradley on Unsplash

A Climate Lawyer’s work is largely driven by climate change, and new laws and regulations designed to meet climate action goals. This work is different from traditional Environmental Lawyers, and requires specialized skills and experience in climate issues, impacts, and technology. Climate work also sits at the intersection of law, equity, resilience, and health and wellness .Climate Lawyers also often specialize in the intersection of climate with a specific industry or industries - for example, our work focuses on the intersection of climate with buildings.

Climate Lawyers join a list of professionals who provide specialized support to existing industries, including accountants, engineers, risk managers, insurance brokers, and other lawyers who have a more general practice.

Top three reasons Climate Lawyers are in high demand:

Market Shift

Over the past several years, sustainability has transitioned from largely voluntary and philanthropic-driven, to highly regulated and compliance-driven. This market shift is reflected in the language and the level of detail and specificity in the issues and topics. Consider the shift in language from “Corporate Social Responsibility” to “Environmental, Social and Governance.”

This market shift has not only created a need for new types of roles, but also for existing professionals to work “in sustainability” ranging from Marketing to Compliance to HR to - you guessed it - Legal.

In fact, “green” no longer has the general meaning it once did (because it can’t anymore) and “greenwashing” has become so prevalent that there is now backlash in the form of “greenhushing.” How are general practitioners supposed to keep up? They aren’t; they need support from lawyers who work in this space every day.

Increasingly Regulated and Technical

Sustainability and climate work have moved from a voluntary, largely unregulated space to one that is highly regulated.

Where voluntary frameworks and some industry guidance previously existed, there are now multiple organizations dedicated to a single issue, guides that are hundreds of pages long, and specialized consultants and tools to support specific aspects of sustainability. Embodied carbon and carbon offsets are just two examples of highly technical aspects of sustainability and climate work; for a relatively narrow scope, there is an incredible amount of depth and detail involved.

Similarly, sustainability, climate work, and related aspects have become increasingly regulated, in various ways and at virtually all levels of government. New laws and regulations are implemented so quickly that Columbia University’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law maintains a US Climate Legislation Tracker.

Carbon is Changing Everything

Carbon is an interesting thing to attempt to regulate, because carbon does not respect jurisdictional boundaries. This is not necessarily new, as we have struggled with these challenges with respect to clean air and water legislation. But carbon is highly intersectional, and closely tied to risk management, which is an additional layer that has spurred new frameworks, terminology, and experts, often under the umbrella of Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG).

And, particularly with conversations and regulation around Scope 3 emissions, jurisdictional borders have little to no meaning. For example, California’s SB 253 is expected to have significant impacts not only in that state, but due to the inclusion of Scope 3 reporting requirements, much broader impacts both nationally and globally. The same is true for legislation in the EU, which impacts many US operations, given the global nature of business.

Climate Lawyers are in high demand

To meet this need, we launched Climate Aligned Law, where climate work is all we do. If you need support with climate-specific issues, reach out. And what’s perhaps most rewarding about this work is that even Climate Lawyers are specialized, so if we cannot help you with your issue, chances are another lawyer in our network can, and we are happy to make that referral.