Legal500—Green Guide or Greenwashing?
Billed as a guide to ‘put a spotlight on firms contributing to a green transition’, the Legal500 Green Guide has inadvertently become a highly effective greenwashing tool for law firms.
Although the intent is admirable, The Green Guide has a number of major shortcomings: its lack of selectivity means that even firms that conduct huge amounts of work to enable climate pollution are included in the Green Guide, it focuses disproportionately on firms’ operational emissions commitments rather than their work for clients, and it provides little context to qualify the opaque and self-reported data that firms provide. These shortcomings mean that the Green Guide misses the opportunity to enhance transparency in the legal industry and provides cover to law firms with little commitment to sustainability beyond an active PR department.
