An initiative to ensure commercial contracts drive 'positive outcomes for climate, nature and society', has received a grant of $650,000 (£485,000) from a US-based foundation.The grant from the Patrick J. McGovern Foundation will enable The Chancery Lane Project to build a tool enabling lawyers to benchmark their contracts against relevant laws, regulations, standards and frameworks.
The money will also fund new model clauses to reduce the environmental impact of artificial intelligence. The grant follows the foundation’s first grant of $250,000 to the project last year.
The benchmark tool will assess the potential climate impact of content, potential greenwashing risks, and compliance with the regulatory environment, legal requirements, and ambition, The Chancery Lane Project said. It will work on contracts drafted using its own clauses, on climate clauses drafted in-house, as well as contracts that do not address climate at all. Legal teams can use the results to compare drafts, find gaps, or start an internal conversation about what to change.
'The first round of funding let us put our clauses into the tools lawyers already use,' said Ben Metz, executive director, of the project. 'The obvious next question from users was: how good is what I have produced? Benchmarking answers that question.'
Meanwhile as AI becomes part of everyday legal work, the contracts that govern AI itself need to address its environmental footprint, Metz said. 'We will keep experimenting and prototyping, but we are now building on a foundation that works.'
The Chancery Lane Project said it will share everything it develops through the programme openly, for public benefit.
The Patrick J. McGovern Foundation is a philanthropic organisation 'dedicated to advancing artificial intelligence and data science solutions to create a thriving, equitable, and sustainable future for all'. It commemorates Patrick McGovern, founder of the International Data Group.
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