Bridging the climate gap: Our insights into legal education and professional regulation

Welcome to the second instalment of our three-part blog series exploring the intersection of law, climate, and nature action. In our previous post, we introduced our 10-month research project and shared key findings on how the business of law intersects with climate and nature action.

In this second post, we delve deeper into a critical aspect of our research: legal education, training, and professional regulation. Our exploratory work identified these areas as significant factors impacting the effectiveness of non-contentious law and lawyers in responding to the climate and nature crises.

We’ll share our insights from mapping the life journey of a lawyer, highlighting key decision-makers, challenges, existing solutions, and opportunities for intervention. Our focus on England and Wales provides a specific context, but we believe our methodology and analysis offer valuable insights that can be adapted to other jurisdictions.

Let’s explore what we’ve learned about preparing legal professionals to tackle one of the most pressing challenges of our time, as visualised in our systems map.

Mapping the life journey of a lawyer

Our mapping exercise aimed to visualise the complex interactions between various stakeholders in the legal ecosystem throughout a lawyer’s career. By creating this visual representation, we sought to identify key decision-makers, challenges, existing solutions, and opportunities for intervention at each stage of a lawyer’s journey. This approach allowed us to pinpoint where and how climate and nature considerations could be more effectively integrated into legal education, training, and practice.

We decided to focus on England and Wales as a jurisdiction. This was mostly based on our own knowledge, access to information and participants, and to ensure a degree of specificity in what we’re doing. Naturally, this raised limitations in our research, particularly for how it relates in a global context. However, we hope our research methodology and analysis provides a useful framework that can be adapted and improved for other jurisdictions and legal systems in an easier manner.

We created and tested an initial framework internally. We then spoke to 15 participants (on top of the initial 30 participants) using a semi-structured interview format. This included junior and senior lawyers, academics, policy researchers and advisers, and nonprofit organisations.

The goal was to speak to as many people as possible until we stopped learning anything new, and ensure the quality, usefulness, and accuracy of what we were mapping. This happened roughly around speaking to the 8th participant.

What our map shows

Our map outlines a series of events across the life journey of a lawyer, from the decision to study at university to retirement. At each stage of this journey, we identify:

• Key decision-makers or policy drivers
• Blockers or challenges that hinder the integration of climate and nature into legal education and professional regulation and training
• Solutions that already exist within the system
• Opportunities for intervention to better align non-contentious law with climate and nature.

Our main findings

The knowledge gap in climate and nature issues

For private practice lawyers, the level of knowledge on climate and nature issues and preparedness to competently advise on related risks, impacts and opportunities is very low.

There is a wide-scale immediate need for education on the basics of climate and nature and how both intersect with law and legal advice. England and Wales is considered a leading jurisdiction, so the level of awareness and preparedness is likely to be lower internationally. This may be an area of interest for further research.

Existing education and training initiatives

There is a large concentration of actors and initiatives already providing education and training to legal professionals on climate (within law firms and via external initiatives). However, we’re less sure of what their level of engagement is, who their target audiences are or how embedded into legal practice they are, and how their impact is being monitored and evaluated.

For example, we understand the majority of lawyers interested in upskilling source education and training outside of their organisation. This may be an area of interest for further research.

The Law Society’s climate guidance: Strengths and limitations

The Law Society of England and Wales climate guidance has been well received. But it has its limitations. While legal professionals are being taught what the guidance says, there’s a gap in understanding how it affects their day-to-day work. As one participant noted, the guidance covers the “what”, but not the “so what?”. This highlights an immediate need for more practical, sector-specific training on how to apply the guidance in various practice areas, particularly those with significant climate and nature impacts.

We found that law firms tend to use it as a tick-boxing exercise, rather than a forum to meaningfully engage in climate-related work. There is appetite, and an immediate need, for further guidance and training on how the guidance translates into specific sectors and practice areas, especially those that have more negative impacts on climate and nature.

Challenges in university education

Universities are a very difficult ground to intervene due to their own politics and business models. Our research identified both challenges and opportunities in legal education. Universities face difficulties in integrating climate and nature into every module due to their own politics and business models. However, there are promising initiatives underway.

For instance, Kim Bouwer at Durham University is leading efforts to incorporate climate into core legal curricula for undergraduate students in England. These efforts at the university level are crucial for laying the foundation of climate awareness in future legal professionals.

The Solicitors Qualifying Exam (SQE) and climate content

The SQE is now the main route to becoming a solicitor, and there are signs this has democratised and improved accessibility to becoming a solicitor. However, there is little to no mention of climate and nature in SQE courses and exams, and very few actors are addressing this problem.

Including climate-related content in professional qualification courses and exams is a powerful point of intervention, particularly for upskilling lawyers at the outset of their career to match their increasing expectations of future employers’ credentials on climate and nature issues.

The role of the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA)

The SRA is virtually absent from the field and lagging behind the Law Society of England and Wales climate guidance. The SRA’s Principles and Code of Conduct do not explicitly mention climate change but could be interpreted in this way, alongside the Law Society’s guidance.

A significant problem for coordinated action in England and Wales is that the SRA and Law Society are separate bodies from each other. More coherent collaboration between both bodies would provide greater, and perhaps more impactful, clarity from a professional regulation perspective.

Professional negligence and climate-related risks

There seems to be consensus that a professional negligence claim against an individual lawyer is a matter of when, not if. Lawyers are currently not properly advising on the climate-related risks, mostly as a result of lack of education and training, and a claim against a solicitor would be a watershed moment for this from a competency and professional duties perspective. However, a claim of this nature is extremely difficult.

The emerging concept of advised emissions

The concept of “advised emissions” – emissions attributed to legal advice – is gaining momentum in the legal sector. Mentioned in the Law Society of England and Wales climate guidance, several organisations are working to create a methodology for measuring these emissions.

However, our research reveals concerns about the complexity of quantifying advised emissions and uncertainty about how quickly regulators will require law firms to measure, manage, and report on them. This emerging area represents both a challenge and an opportunity for the legal profession to demonstrate leadership in addressing climate change.

“There is a systematic problem with climate law. It isn’t a thing of its own. It’s an evolving concept. There is no such thing as climate law. You need to see climate as part of every area of law.” – research participant

Looking ahead

Stay tuned for our next blog post, where we’ll unveil an exciting new training initiative that directly addresses some of the needs uncovered in this research.

We’ve received a grant from Shoosmiths Foundation to develop a training course that will equip legal and business professionals with practical climate knowledge and skills, including the integration of our content into day-to-day legal work. This initiative will also aim to bridge the gap between understanding climate guidance and applying it effectively in practice.

We value your insights and experiences. How do you see these findings impacting your legal practice? Share your thoughts with us on LinkedIn, and don’t forget to share this blog post with your colleagues. Your engagement helps drive this crucial conversation forward.