We’re not quite into the ‘silly season’, even though the first coils of tumbleweed are drifting across the legal media beat. Fortunately, the weather has given me something topical to write about, if only indirectly. How very British.

Climate change has slipped down the news agenda since direct action against City law firms acting for fossil fuel polluters went out of fashion. It’s 18 months since we reported a protest at one of their offices. The focus of activists is said to have shifted to those with a more obvious role in supporting emissions-intensive activities. Harsher anti-protest measures and penalties for climate activism have had an impact too.

Meanwhile, it’s three years since the Law Society published landmark guidance indicating that law firms can refuse to act for polluters if the client’s activities inhibit progress toward net zero or otherwise conflict with the firm’s own ‘values’ on climate change. The Society was careful not to say ‘should’ not act, which was the salient point.

This week Chancery Lane followed up with further guidance for in-house lawyers. This explains how climate change increasingly engages the professional ethics framework, urging solicitors to ‘embed climate considerations’ into all relevant legal matters. ‘For every major transaction or project, ask about climate,’ it adds. In something of a coup for the Chancery Lane Project, it also calls on solicitors to leverage available precedent climate clauses to strengthen contracts.

As our lawns parch and the garden hose sits idle in the shed, however, there is a new(ish) factor to consider. This is artificial intelligence, described by the London Solicitors Litigation Association today as an ‘elephant in the room’(p30). How does increasing AI usage sit alongside a law firm’s sustainability commitments? Is the profession even asking itself this question?

Lawyers don’t drill for oil, but their embrace of AI has been evangelical. And every prompt relies on significant physical infrastructure, including data centres, compute and cooling systems. As our author crisply points out, AI is not environmentally neutral simply because it is digital.

As for the climate change reporting industry, whose expansion continues apace, I remain sceptical. Many businesses continue to behave as if writing about something somehow mitigates its impact. An empty act of expiation, in too many cases.

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