Sustainable and Responsible Legal Advice Pledge

Our Sustainable and Responsible Legal Advice Pledge sets out the approach we take to advising clients consistent with our values. We hope and believe that it will resonate with clients who share them.

Our purpose and commitment to positive impact

Bellevue Law’s purpose is to provide a genuine alternative to traditional law firms, creating positive impact for our team, clients and wider society and the environment.

As a certified B Corp, our commitment to balancing profit with creating material positive impact on society and the environment is enshrined in the firm’s articles of association.

Our objective is, as far as possible, to work:

• Sustainably: meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs; and
• Responsibly: creating positive social and environmental impact through the legal advice we provide to clients.

Climate change

Bellevue Law has taken several steps to measure and reduce the carbon emissions associated with our operations and supply chain.

As the Law Society’s Guide, ‘Impact of climate change on solicitors’ recognises, however, the most significant greenhouse gas emissions associated with legal practice are likely to be those
associated with the matters upon which lawyers advise, known as ‘scope four’ emissions or ‘advised’ emissions.

These are not captured by traditional carbon accounting, which measures direct and indirect emissions associated with an organisation’s operations, and those associated with its supply chain (‘scope one to three’ emissions).

The Law Society guidance advises that firms that are committed to limiting climate change should consider how they might be able to influence the reduction of advised emissions. This might
include assisting clients who wish to reduce their emissions and engage in transition planning and considering whether to accept instructions on matters that they believe are incompatible with their firm’s climate change commitments.

Social impact

We believe that the same principles apply to the social impact of our work.

Our approach: advice which creates positive impact

We approach the impact of our advice – our ‘advised impact’ – as follows:

• We welcome the opportunity to work with clients who share our values.
  • In particular, we offer discounted rates to registered charity and non-profit clients. We also offer a discounted fixed-fee employment contract and policy product for both these clients and purpose-driven businesses, such as fellow B Corps and climate-tech businesses.
• We will decline to work for corporate clients in sectors defined by B Lab as ‘controversial’ (charity lotteries, debt collection agencies in emerging markets, nuclear power or radioactive materials, mining, pharmaceuticals, recreational marijuana) or ‘ineligible’ (fossil fuel producers, gambling, pornography, prisons and detention centres, tobacco and weapons and defence).
  • While B Lab, rather than Bellevue Law, has determined which sectors are deemed ‘controversial’ and ‘ineligible’ and our B Corp certification would not preclude doing some work for clients in these sectors, as a relatively small firm we have taken the approach that it is simplest and cleanest to decline all such instructions.
  • This policy applies to corporate clients only, and we regularly advise individuals working across all sectors.
• We will also decline potential instructions from clients outside such sectors on matters which (having first considered and discussed with the client) we believe have a material adverse social and/or environmental impact.
• While always providing high quality legal advice, and complying with our duties to act in our clients’ best interests and in line with their instructions, where relevant our approach will incorporate considerations as to how clients might increase their positive social and/or environmental impact (and reduce negative impact). We believe that sustainable and responsible practices will often be in clients’ long-term best interests.
• We are signatories to the Greener Litigation Pledge which aims to minimise the environmental impact of dispute resolution.
• We embrace a ‘digital first’ approach, avoiding unnecessary travel and paper use, subject to client needs.
• As a relatively small firm, we have decided not to devote resources at present to attempting to measure our advised emissions, but will monitor developments in ‘Know Your Carbon’ methodologies and may review this in future.
• We also contribute to debate, discussion and thought leadership on this topic, and regularly provide clients with support in respect of their own sustainability goals.

We recognise that there is significant room for debate about what constitutes sustainable and responsible legal advice, and that we will not get every judgement call right. But we hope that the
approach outlined in this Pledge will play a part, both in ensuring that our advice creates positive environmental and social impact and in encouraging sustainable and responsible professional services delivery more widely.