2023 Law Firm Benchmarking: Sustainability challenges for law firms
Your people and clients want to know and understand your sustainability journey.
Learn more about the sustainability issues law firms are currently facing with Alex Hindson, Head of Sustainability, and Nicky Owen, Head of Professional Practices.
People
Our 2023 Law Firm Benchmarking findings showed that:
- 72% of firms recognise that to attract a diverse workforce and secure talent there needs to be a sustainability programme in place.
- 40% of firms indicated that they need to communicate their sustainability programmes to their people.
- 34% of firms appreciate that working with people and creating an environment for them to be themselves in the workplace, is an enabler to increased productivity and commitment.
It is clearly a hot topic of conversation for people and when bringing talent into the business. It is therefore important that people know what firms have in place and are doing in respect of sustainability. People want to understand the firm’s journey.
Clients
48% of City firms are under pressure to provide details of sustainability to clients and correspondingly are focused on disclosing, collecting, and reporting sustainability, diversity and inclusion statistics. This requirement that City firms are facing leads to firms wanting independent assurance of their disclosures.
Regional firms are currently lagging behind at 27% but in the future there will be increasing pressure to promote and talk about their sustainability journey.
Suppliers
47% of all firms want to know about their suppliers’ greenhouse gas emissions.
For professional service firms, around 90% of emissions relate to ‘Scope 3 emissions’, outside the boundaries of the firm.
Responsible Procurement plays an important role that firms need to address, this could well include making an individual within the firm responsible for overseeing internal procurement and sustainability.
Firms will need to consider whether they want science-based targets and how that fits in to their plans.
What are the key sustainability challenges facing your firm?
| Central London | Regional | All | |
| Attracting a more diverse workforce and securing the best talent | 76% | 69% | 72% |
| Establishing or enhancing our external sustainability disclosures | 57% | 23% | 38% |
| Understanding our supplier climate change footprint (greenhouse gas scope 3 emissions) | 52% | 42% | 47% |
| Responding to client sustainability due diligence requests | 48% | 27% | 36% |
| Understanding our internal climate change footprint (greenhouse gas scope 1 & 2 emissions) | 43% | 42% | 43% |
| Better communicating our sustainability programme to our people | 43% | 38% | 40% |
| Providing the appropriate flexible working arrangements to allow people to return to the workforce | 43% | 27% | 34% |
| Helping all of our people to feel safe to be themselves at work so they become productive and committed | 33% | 35% | 34% |
| Collecting information about the diversity of our people | 33% | 12% | 21% |
| Seeking assurance over our external sustainability disclosures | 33% | 8% | 19% |
| Improving our people engagement survey scores | 19% | 19% | 19% |
Developing sustainability programmes
Around a third of firms have had a sustainability programme in place for two years or more and feel that it has had a positive impact on clients and people retention, whereas 57% of firms are in the process of setting up a sustainability programme. The good news for these firms is that they should find that when they evaluate the impact, it will have been received positively by clients and their people.
There are 11% of firms that have no plans to bring in a sustainability programme. Going forward, firms may feel the pressure from their people and society to rethink and start talking about their own journey.
Do you have a well-established sustainability programme in your firm?
| Central London | Regional | All | |
| We have a programme that has been in place for over two years that we believe is having a positive impact on client and people retention | 38% | 27% | 32% |
| We are in the process of developing a sustainability programme for our firm because we see it as a commercial priority and we need to catch up | 19% | 23% | 21% |
| We do not yet have a structured sustainability programme but we plan to do so in the next 18 months | 14% | 31% | 23% |
| We have recently launched a sustainability programme which is well received but it is too early to evaluate its impact | 14% | 12% | 13% |
| We do not have any structured sustainability programme and we have no plans to do so | 14% | 8% | 11% |
Firms need to continue reviewing the information they are reporting in respect of sustainability as the information or lack of will be scrutinised both internally and externally.
Determining how to respond to the increasingly challenging climate-related reporting environment is a growing issue for law firms.
At Crowe, we support our clients’ climate journey in three ways.
- Providing an overview of the existing frameworks and initiatives, as well as the current market and industry insights.
- Assisting in the development of their climate risk road map.
- Reviewing draft disclosures and providing informal and/or formal feedback.
For more information, get in touch with Alex Hindson or your usual Crowe contact.
