The Uncertain Solicitor on ... the Law Society's role
We are moving swiftly towards a world – here in the UK (it already exists elsewhere) - of regular power outages affecting our ability to work, travel, communicate and maintain liveable indoor temperatures; food shortages; lack of clean water; floods and fires making people and businesses homeless; properties and businesses being too expensive, or too risky, to insure. The associated pressures on our social infrastructure (the health and care sectors, policing and the courts) may break already creaking systems. A financial system built on nothing more substantial than inconceivable levels of debt may shatter like a pane of glass. This is not science fiction. This is a widely held prognosis. It is based on the scientific evidence around climate heating and mass extinction on the one hand and on the other, humanity’s refusal to engage seriously with the changes necessary to mitigate those events or to adapt to their consequences. Increasingly, if you do not accept this is the near future we are creating, it is because you are not paying attention.
What will be the role of lawyers in such a world? What do you want them to be? These are questions all of us currently holding practising certificates should be asking ourselves, and one another. They are questions any legal academic should be encouraging their students to ask, and helping them find the resources to answer. It is a conversation the Law Society should be leading, between its members, their clients and society at large.
In the short term, there is one obvious question we can be asking of ourselves and our clients: what are we doing to get our carbon emissions to a minimal level and achieving net zero with the ones that remain? This must apply to our Scope 3 emissions; that is, those created indirectly by our activities, including the provision of our advice. Asking this question – and acting on the answer to take steps to reduce those emissions – will contribute to mitigating the effects of climate heating. Already, a troubling amount of global temperature increases are inevitable flowing from our lassitude to date on this issue though, so we also have to explore how we can contribute to the adaptation necessary to deal with the effects of those increases. There will be plenty of practical issues to address from the matters arising and described in the opening paragraph, but there are also some big philosophical questions to confront.
Law is inherent in human society. Wherever we come together, we establish rules of engagement. This is as true of indigenous tribes in Micronesia, as it is of dictatorships such as North Korea, or the highly regulated, market based economies of the West. Law holds in tension competing interests and priorities, reflects dominant ideologies and offers degrees of predictability and consistency for people to base decisions and build plans upon.
Arguably, in the West, we have become rather blasé about the rule of law, taking it for granted and assuming it will always be there, underpinning our ever-increasingly affluent lifestyles. For 75 years, in legal terms, it has largely been something of a niche interest: hugely important but not under threat, leaving most of us to make a handsome living focusing instead on helping our clients achieve their aims. Rare has been the lawyer who has questioned those aims, concentrating instead on doing the technical work well, and not what that work may have facilitated.
With the very real prospect of social breakdown looming ominously on the horizon, surely we need to be lifting our heads from our screens and contemplating our roles in supporting the rule of law in the coming years? Potentially, this is a golden opportunity for the profession: a chance to align law and justice more closely again, after years of slippage in pursuit of Mammon; to come to the fore in a time of crisis, using our knowledge and skills for the public good and helping to deliver a form of stability and order to provide a platform upon which we may adapt to the challenges we face and create new generative relationships with one another and the rest of the natural world.
Of course, these will be contested conversations. They will take place, initially at least, whilst we are still embedded in the system causing the conditions for breakdown. Emotions such as fear and guilt, anger and hopelessness will have to be navigated skilfully to create the space to contemplate the changes we need without stimulating greater entrenched resistance. We will have to go into them embracing uncertainty around the what, but resolute in our commitment to the why: to use law for the wider public good and to keep that as our guiding principle.
Not all lawyers may be ready for these conversations yet, but looking at the likes of the Legal Sustainability Alliance, The Chancery Lane Project, Esela, the Net Zero Lawyers Alliance and the initiatives springing up in the law schools of universities, there are certainly enough to get the conversation started. The Law Society, with its Future World initiative has already taken steps in this direction. Will it show true leadership for the profession by creating the space for those that want to go there to do so, and by sharing what emerges with all its members, so we can step up in anticipation of, not in response to, the challenges rushing to meet us?
[Please see also, related to this, https://flickread.com/edition/html/60dae6413beca#29 , published by Manchester Law Society]