The Carbon Circle: The UK Legal Industry’s Ties to Fossil Fuel Companies
Our first-ever UK report exposes the London’s legal industry work for fossil fuel companies, and the role top-ranked law firms play in exacerbating the climate crisis. This comes at a crucial juncture as climate litigation movements have increasingly reaffirmed their power within courtrooms and collected significant victories across the globe.
The alarming reality detailed in the report outlines 55 firms facilitated £1.48 trillion in fossil fuel projects, more than 2.5 times the amount these firms facilitated for the renewable energy industry (£546 billion).
‘The Carbon Circle’ report analyses law firms’ oil and gas transactions, as well as their representation of fossil fuel companies in Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) arbitration. We hope this report will spur further organising within the UK’s legal industry.
“This report is just the beginning. We urgently need to transform this industry, and we call on all law students and lawyers to refuse to take on fossil fuels work. Together, we have a tremendous amount of power to bring about a liveable future,” said Chris McCay, a law student at Trinity College Dublin and member of the report team.
The report team found that:
In the context of transactional work (e.g. drafting contracts and arranging financing), from 2018 to 2022, 55 firms facilitated £1.48 trillion in fossil fuel projects, more than 2.5 times the amount these firms facilitated for the renewable energy industry (£546 billion). We chose to analyse these 55 firms because each facilitated over £1 billion in fossil fuel transactions over the past five years (2018-2022). Clifford Chance, Allen and Overy, Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, Linklaters and Slaughter and May, the elite quintet known as the ‘Magic Circle’, are collectively responsible for over £285 billion worth of fossil fuel transactional work. Five firms out of 55 make up almost 20% of the total fossil fuel transactional work, with 4 of those 5 firms placing in the top 15 of the list.
In the context of ISDS, a legal mechanism by which companies can sue countries, both Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer and King & Spalding represented fossil fuel interests in more than 20% of all fossil fuel-related cases examined in this study. Freshfields represented fossil fuel interests in 20 cases, the highest number of any firm, while King & Spalding ranked second with 18 cases. These two firms play a disproportionate role in ensuring fossil fuel interests prevail in arbitration disputes, representing more than ten times the average number of cases across the 55 firms examined in the report.
Fatima Aziz, another report team member and a law student at the University of Bristol, hopes the team’s work will help spur a transformation in the legal profession. “The report makes clear that London’s legal industry is deeply entangled with fossil fuel companies. I shouldn’t have to endanger my own future in order to become a lawyer, and I hope to be part of forging a climate just profession.”
