Unlocking systemic change: the hidden power of non-contentious law in the climate transition

Fostering non-contentious legal work can drive systemic change, unlock hidden leverage points, and amplify climate action throughout the economy.

Recent developments in non-contentious climate legal work, from mapping the field to demonstrating its real-world impact, show the significant opportunity this area holds for accelerating the climate transition. Viewed individually, they can be seen as incremental, sometimes small, but positive steps. Viewed as a whole, they expose the scale of the opportunity presented to us. 

This article begins a series where we explore this potential. We at TCLP are thrilled to see the field getting the attention it deserves and excited to take this work forward, together with the myriad of actors pursuing the same goal: to realise the full potential for non-contentious law in our efforts to address the climate crisis.

The opportunity revealed

We’re seeing significant interest in using non-contentious law to address climate and nature issues. This includes efforts to integrate climate into corporate governance, innovations in green financing, and work to restructure supply chains to make them climate-aligned. Against the challenges of rising geopolitical complexity, the threat of political backsliding and unprecedented disruption to the legal sector, climate law is making meaningful progress. That said, it is still relatively untapped – realising the full potential of non-contentious law requires the design and development of systems architecture. 

Whether it’s academics exploring the potential of non-contentious law, philanthropic foundations commissioning research into the field, NGOs developing new workstreams, law firms building new practice areas or even new boutique law firms getting established: all the signs point to the vast potential of the non-litigious climate legal ecosystem.

The Chancery Lane Project (TCLP) has a strong grasp of the ecosystem and its actors, which is a prize hard-won from 6 years of pioneering in the field. The widening of the climate-legal narrative beyond litigation is welcomed and inspiring. However, we now collectively need to quickly shift from understanding the landscape into the realm of systems engineering. 

Recent efforts at landscape mapping, undertaken by a range of organisations, reinforce the role law plays as the hidden infrastructure of the climate transition. TCLP is excited to collaborate to unlock the full potential of this infrastructure. Whether you are a philanthropist, an NGO, an academic or a practising lawyer, together we can rewrite the fundamental code of our economic and legal systems.

Engineering the way forward

The combined efforts of philanthropic colleagues and NGO actors in the field have enabled us to take a step back and understand what the field needs to flourish. Drawing on this work, we see 3 major development opportunities: building architecture, developing infrastructure, and launching a regranter.

1. From research to architecture

A strong body of research is available that exposes the landscape of the field, the opportunities for climate action it presents, and what is needed to strengthen it.

Building on this work, and moving into a phase of strategic design and legal system engineering, there are a range of opportunities to develop the architecture needed to realise the full potential of non-contentious law. For example: 

• Leverage points: Identifying interventions with potential for disproportionate impact, and mapping the workflows, interactions and stakeholders across each.
• A power analysis: Analyse these identified interventions to understand who controls outcomes, where outcomes can cascade (for example, contractual clauses, legal tech), and the maturity and influence of different actors. This would create a “heat map” for resource allocation.
• Assess leverage points and sequencing: Prioritise interventions based on potential impact and sequencing to identify compounding effects and exponential returns (“flywheels”).
• Associate results with leverage points: Define “what good looks like” for each potential intervention by building a taxonomy of outcomes (for example, volume of corporate legal reforms, or cascade potential across supply chains).

In combination, this approach will clarify where and how to intervene, who is best placed to act, and what results to expect. Examples of intervention points we have already identified, and in some cases are working on, are in the section below.

TCLP will initiate work on this component, but we can only do a fraction of it, and only in areas where we have expertise. We welcome other organisations to contribute to this and constructively critique the results of the work as they emerge.

2. Developing the Climate and Law Infrastructure Facility (CLIF)

We already know some of these key intervention points. We propose the development of a Climate and Law Infrastructure Facility (CLIF) to focus on a small number that have the potential to rewrite the code governing all economic activity.

From our work, we know the following intervention points hold this potential:

• Professional obligations: As climate risk becomes increasingly foreseeable and material, its integration into the professional obligations of lawyers, engineers, accountants and financial professionals is within reach.
• Fiduciary duty: Interventions in securities law, trust law, accounting standards and corporate governance can establish that “profit without considering climate risk” constitutes a breach of fiduciary duty.
• Supply chains: Mandating business-wide emissions reductions that cascade through supply chains creates huge, yet often unseen, climate impacts at a staggering scale.
• Artificial intelligence: AI can restructure legal knowledge and its distribution, integrating and amplifying climate action across non-contentious law’s knowledge systems.
• Corporate governance: Corporate governance can act as a conduit for the full range of these “re-codings”, transforming corporate behaviour.

Each of these domains provides critical infrastructure within the broader legal and financial systems and can disproportionately affect wider systems and the behaviours of other actors. Each holds the potential to redirect trillions in capital through a single legal shift.

We are in the early stages of developing this component and invite you to join us in co-designing CLIF to secure the legal foundations for a decarbonised and equitable future.

3. The role of regranters

For the field to reach its potential, it requires not only more resources but also a coherent, coordinated strategy for deploying them. We know funding is already flowing and that there’s interest from a broad range of charitable foundations. Significant additional funding needs to be made available, and, importantly, it needs to be coordinated. 

A regranter could serve the full spectrum of philanthropic capital: as a conduit for large charitable foundations working on climate, as a donor-advised fund for individual giving, and as an impact investment platform for funders seeking a blended return. 

A thematically focused regranter with a global remit could facilitate this range of grant-making. Law is global and systemic, and any regranter would, ideally, be similarly focused. Add a dose of strategic analysis and the capabilities to convene and connect key actors, and we’d have a critical piece of the infrastructure needed to realise the full potential of the field. The team at TCLP has the requisite experience to build this piece of the infrastructure, and we have the organisational capabilities and understanding of the field. However, several existing regranters may be better suited and have more capacity than we do. So this is where we’ll start – engaging with and encouraging regranters to enter the field.

A unified call to action

The sheer scope of this systemic re-engineering requires a whole ecosystem approach. The challenge of rewriting the legal operating system for a decarbonised economy is simply too vast for singular entities.

For a truly transformative impact, funders and delivery organisations must collaborate to realise the potential of non-contentious law in tackling climate change.

By strategically engineering the legal sector, we can unlock its full potential contribution in avoiding catastrophic climate consequences.

Radical candour, deep collaboration, selfless action, imagination. Funders, NGOs, lawyers and academics – let’s work together to design and then engineer the legal infrastructure we need for a rapid transition to a green, fair and inclusive world.

To find out more, get involved, or be kept updated as this work progresses, please email Ben Metz, Executive Director of The Chancery Lane Project.