Unlocking systemic change: mapping leverage points across legal education and training

As part of our series exploring the hidden power of non-contentious law, we move from overarching development opportunities to the specific potential of legal education and training to realise systemic change in the field.

In our previous piece, Our insights into legal education and professional regulation, we mapped the journey of a solicitor across education, training, qualification, and practice. We also examined how these environments influence how legal professionals understand and engage with climate and nature issues. The first version of this map helped us identify the key decision-makers shaping that journey, the blockers that limit climate-aligned practice, and the opportunities emerging across the system.

Over the past year, further interviews, workshops, and collaborations deepened our understanding. We revisited the map to make it clearer, more adaptable across jurisdictions, and more useful for ongoing analysis and collaboration.

This updated visual now moves from “understanding the landscape” towards a more structured phase of strategic design.

1. Leverage points: a clearer, more universal lifecycle structure

One of the strongest signals from our research is that many critical leverage points sit at predictable moments in a lawyer’s development. Many of them appear far earlier than expected.

To reflect this more clearly, the updated map now follows a simplified five-stage lifecycle that appears consistently across most jurisdictions:

• Education & foundation
• Vocational training
• Qualification & induction
• Specialisation
• Leadership & legacy

This provides a shared structure that colleagues across different legal systems can adapt to their own contexts. It also allows leverage points to be located not just by topic (for example climate competency or drafting practice) but by when they emerge in a lawyer’s career. That timing becomes crucial for understanding sequencing and practical influence.

2. Power analysis: parallel lenses showing how influence operates

To better understand how decisions are shaped at each stage of the lifecycle, this interactive map now sets out four parallel lenses that consistently appeared in our interviews and analysis:

• Workflows – the core activities shaping lawyer behaviour and expectations
• Actors – the institutions, gatekeepers and organisations influencing those activities
• Blockers – the frictions that prevent climate and nature from being integrated into routine legal work
• System opportunities – existing initiatives or mechanisms with potential to create alignment

This layered structure provides a clearer view of where influence sits and how it flows. It also shows how different actors shape professional development.

Rather than viewing challenges in isolation, the map enables a more holistic understanding of how different interactions shape legal practice. These interactions determine whether climate and nature become embedded in day-to-day work.

This aligns with the broader objective of building architecture that clarifies “who controls outcomes” and where cascading effects may arise. That objective was outlined in the first article of this series.

3. Assessing leverage points and sequencing: a more adaptable, jurisdiction-agnostic frame

One limitation of the original map was its anchoring in England and Wales, which made it harder to explore how similar dynamics appear globally. As our conversations broadened internationally, it became clear that a more jurisdiction-agnostic frame was needed.

The updated map removes jurisdiction-specific references. It focuses instead on structural patterns that appear across legal systems. This makes it easier to:

• Compare jurisdictions
• Identify missing interventions
• Explore how leverage points appear earlier or later depending on regulatory context
• Consider sequencing more systematically

By presenting the lifecycle in a universal format, and the lenses in parallel, the map supports the kind of comparative and sequenced analysis outlined in our first blog.

4. Associating results with leverage points: a clearer sense of direction

While the map itself does not include outcomes, this blog adds a concise set of desired outcomes that emerged across our research. These help readers understand why the relationships in the map matter. They also signal what improved alignment could look like in practice:

• Stronger baseline climate competency for new lawyers
• Clearer climate-related expectations embedded into professional standards
• Wider adoption of climate-aligned drafting practices across firms
• More climate-informed advice reaching senior decision-makers
• Improved integration of climate and nature risks into transactional and governance work

These outcomes are intentionally high-level. They are not prescriptive and do not dictate specific interventions. Instead, they provide a frame for interpreting the map and understanding how the system might evolve as leverage points are acted on. This echoes the fourth step identified in the series introduction.

What this updated map contributes

Our aim with this redesigned map is simple: to make the complexity of the legal career lifecycle easier to understand, compare, and discuss across jurisdictions. It is not intended as a complete representation of the system, and it cannot capture every nuance of legal education, training, and practice. But it provides a clearer starting point for anyone examining how different elements of the legal profession influence engagement with climate and nature issues.

We will continue refining this work as our research develops. We also welcome reflections from readers engaging with the map in their own contexts.

Scroll through the interactive map below and explore the areas that resonate most with your experience. Let us know whether it supports your work. Please feel free to send your comments to [email protected].