Canadian Law Societies Must Take Climate Action
By Amalie Wilkinson
In 2022, two lawyers brought a resolution about climate change to the Annual General Meeting of the Law Society of British Columbia (“LSBC”) — the governing body for lawyers in the province of British Columbia, Canada. It urged the Society to take a series of measures to promote climate-consciousness among BC lawyers, as well as to evaluate and mitigate the law society’s climate impacts.
The resolution failed with 58% of votes against. However, just 18% of all eligible LSBC members voted on the resolution at all.
In 2023, a similar resolution was brought forward. Once again, the resolution was defeated.
The demise of these resolutions is emblematic of a much larger problem across Canada. Many legal practitioners and law students do not see their work as connected to climate change.
A Canadian Bar Association resolution on climate-conscious lawyering failed in 2021, and with only two exceptions — the Barreau du Québec and the Law Society of New Brunswick — the rest of Canada’s provincial law societies have yet to pass climate-related resolutions.
Why does this matter?
It is increasingly apparent that climate change is going to impact lawyers in all areas of practice. As the 2020 Climate Principles for Enterprises explained, “Attorneys have to investigate the material climate change consequences of any activity in which they are engaged and inform their clients about these consequences.”
The impacts of climate change are already reaching across sectors of society, touching agriculture, financial institutions, migration, heavy industry, policy-making, and more. Competent lawyers working with clients across these sectors will need to inform their clients about the potential liability, reputational damage, and other risks that may arise from their actions or inaction that exacerbate climate change.
As legal scholar Carol Liao has put it: “Just as we expect a family doctor to stay up-to-date on the latest pandemic, or a financial adviser to be aware of subprime mortgage risk, professionals are relied upon by the public to educate themselves on and respond to the latest crises affecting their profession.”
Law societies must play a key role in this. They can offer training and resources to ensure that their members can be climate-competent legal practitioners.
The proposed 2022 resolution before the LSBC, for instance, called on the Law Society to create a task force that would look into "developing further guidelines for lawyers in their practice, creating educational programming for lawyers and articled students, defining climate justice, and developing guidelines for climate conscious lawyering."
More broadly, legal practitioners can make a real impact on climate mitigation. Lawyers have a unique position to provide advice or options to clients whose activities have significant bearing on whether countries achieve their greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets. In counseling their clients, lawyers can choose to discuss potential pathways to mitigate climate consequences, reference the human rights duties of companies in relation to climate change, encourage them to adopt sustainable business models, and more.
Lawyers and legal scholars can also use the cultural and epistemic capital they acquire through their education to push for law reform and government action to address the climate crisis.
Further, lawyers can volunteer or provide pro-bono or reduced-fee services to assist communities negatively impacted by the climate crisis.
Other Jurisdictions
Other jurisdictions are moving forward at an institutional level. In 2020, the International Bar Association put out the “IBA Climate Crisis Statement,” setting out the position of the leading global voice of the legal profession about the role of legal practitioners in responding to climate change. The resolution urges lawyers to take a climate-conscious approach to their practice, and to push actively for government policies oriented towards addressing the climate crisis.
Similarly, the American Bar Association has adopted multiple resolutions regarding climate change and climate justice.
Act Now
Climate action in the legal field is immensely hindered if lawyers do not have sufficient training through their law societies and schools to engage in climate-competent lawyering. It also requires broad recognition of the fact that lawyers’ work is inextricably connected with climate breakdown.
If lawyers and law students take action, we have the power to catalyze transformational climate mitigation efforts. But equally, our inaction has the potential to delay progress and entrench a dangerous, high-emitting status quo.
Lawyers and law students around the globe must acknowledge that we are not neutral actors in the climate crisis. We must act now. It is time to submit, promote, and vote in favour of resolutions at our law societies that acknowledge the urgency of the climate crisis and commit to facilitating climate-conscious lawyering.