HUMAN RIGHTS: academic calls for appeal to 'base instincts'

Appealing to the 'base instincts of competition' may be the way to interest lawyers in corporate social responsibility (CSR), it was claimed last week.

Professor David Kinley, a human rights specialist from Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, told a conference session on CSR that 'lawyers and law firms have not been conspicuous contributors to the debate on whether, what and how human rights obligations should be placed on corporations'.

He argued that expertise in the legal dimensions of CSR - especially the impact on companies of international and extraterritorial human rights law - 'is apparently thin on the ground'.

Prof Kinley said: 'And yet the opportunity to forge a competitive advantage through the development of CSR expertise is certainly there for the taking.

Maybe, indeed, it is to the base instincts of competition that we should be looking for the catalyst for greater engagement by lawyers.'

However, he said there were signs of change, such as the IBA's CSR panel and guidelines to lawyers on CSR issued by the Council of Bars and Law Societies of the European Union (CCBE) (see [2003] Gazette, 4 September, 6).

Prof Kinley said the two main elements of CSR work for lawyers are litigation - running and avoiding it - and policy and advice work.

Danish lawyer Sune Skadegaard Thorsen, one of the practitioners behind the CCBE code, described CSR as 'a huge opportunity for lawyers'.

Jonathan Lux, a partner in the Hamburg office of City firm Ince & Co, warned that CSR is 'an irresistible tide'.

Neil Rose