Law firms are investing heavily in artificial intelligence while simultaneously promoting ambitious sustainability commitments. The uncomfortable question is whether those two objectives align, as firms would like to believe. The profession has spent considerable time debating AI’s impact on productivity, risk management and the future delivery of legal services. At the same time, firms have made increasingly visible commitments to ESG (environmental, social and governance), sustainability and net-zero targets. Yet the connection between these conversations is not always explored explicitly. Discussions about AI and ESG are often framed through different lenses despite their overlap.
AI’s environmental impact is easy to overlook because it feels intangible. Unlike office space, business travel or paper usage, AI is largely invisible to those using it. Yet every prompt relies on significant physical infrastructure, including data centres, computing power and cooling systems. AI is not environmentally neutral simply because it is digital.
The issue is not theoretical. Research published in February by the Thomson Reuters Foundation, New data reveals AI governance gap between policy and practice, creating ESG risks, found that 97% of companies failed to consider the environmental impact of AI systems when making deployment decisions. Whether the legal sector has approached the issue differently is not yet clear. The profession has rightly devoted significant attention to issues such as confidentiality, hallucinations, supervision and responsible use. Comparatively less public attention has been paid to the environmental implications of increasing AI adoption.
The elephant in the room is not that law firms are adopting AI, nor that they are making sustainability commitments. It is that the relationship between those two priorities has not yet been explored as extensively as either issue in isolation.
The issue is not whether firms should adopt AI; they should. The efficiencies are clear and many clients expect firms to use technology intelligently where appropriate. The more difficult question is whether firms can credibly promote sustainability commitments while expanding the use of technologies whose environmental impact may not yet be fully understood, measured or reflected within existing ESG frameworks.
This matters, because sustainability claims are attracting greater scrutiny. Many clients are placing greater emphasis on ESG credentials and firms are investing considerable time and resources on sustainability strategies, environmental reporting and responsible business initiatives. Environmental commitments have become an established part of how firms present themselves to clients, recruits and the wider market.
Junior lawyers may be among the first to identify this tension. They are often among the most active users of AI tools and a key audience for much of a firm’s ESG messaging. The questions being asked are practical rather than ideological, such as how does increasing AI usage sit alongside the firm’s sustainability commitments? To what extent is AI considered as part of firms’ ESG strategies, rather than being discussed primarily as a technology issue? What information is being sought from AI suppliers about energy consumption and emissions? These are not anti-AI questions, but questions about governance.
A key issue, however, is transparency. Many firms have spent years examining the environmental impact of travel policies, office energy use and supply chains. Comparatively, discussions about the environmental implications of increased AI use, particularly concerning indirect emissions and energy consumption, have been less visible. As firms continue to expand their use of AI tools, questions about how AI fits within broader sustainability strategies are likely to become difficult to avoid.
There is also a broader credibility issue. ESG commitments are strongest when they acknowledge complexity rather than avoid it. Clients and employees rarely expect perfection, but they do expect honesty. A firm does not need to have solved every question arising from AI’s environmental impact. However, stakeholders may increasingly expect transparency about how the issue is being considered.
So what practical steps can be taken now?
First, acknowledge that AI has an environmental dimension and forms part of the firm’s sustainability landscape.
Second, bring technology, procurement and ESG teams into the same conversation. AI may benefit from being considered through an ESG lens, as well as an IT and risk-management lens.
Third, ask suppliers the same difficult questions that firms increasingly ask other parts of their supply chain. Transparency regarding energy consumption, emissions and sustainability commitments may become as important as questions concerning security and privacy.
Finally, avoid overstating sustainability claims. Credibility is strengthened when firms openly recognise areas of uncertainty rather than ignoring them.
The legal profession has devoted significant attention to AI’s impact on productivity, training, supervision and risk management. The next debate may be less comfortable. As firms continue to expand their use of AI while simultaneously promoting sustainability credentials, clients, employees and regulators may increasingly ask a simple question: how does AI fit within a firm’s broader environmental commitments?
Firms are not expected to have all the answers. They are, however, expected to be asking the question.
Avneet Baryan, president of the Junior London Solicitors Litigation Association, is a senior associate at Mills & Reeve, London
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