Climate Contract Playbook Edition 3
8
Legal Philanthropy
Introducing: “Legal Philanthropy” – Beyond Pro Bono and Responsible Business? The Chancery Lane Project is unique in many ways: positive, solution focused and collaborative. Not to mention the genesis of a new legal doctrine of commercial contracts driving global environmental outcomes. But this uniqueness makes it difficult to describe the Project and what the participants generously contribute. Our problem is that we struggle to do justice to their efforts. The Project has always been termed ‘Pro Bono’ and certainly the drafting has all been undertaken for free. But there is no legal advice or representation being provided and the beneficiary is the world rather than an identifiable client. As such the Project does not sit within the normal definitions of ‘Pro Bono’ . The Project transcends ‘Pro Bono’. Perhaps ‘Knowledge Philanthropy’ is a better term? This relatively new concept describes a person who shares their knowledge for the benefit of humanity . Certainly, our lawyers use their expert knowledge and skills to co-create legal solutions for the benefit of the world, but we are not sharing that knowledge per se and the Project is not a knowledge manager. The solutions we publish cannot be used in isolation. They still require the expertise, judgement, and negotiation skill of the legal community to deploy the solutions and create real world impact. Only a fraction of the knowledge developed during our legal hackathons and drafting process is put out into the world, for free, as model clauses and laws and their origin stories – the rest is retained by the contributors. Alternatively, the Project could simply be part of a participating firm’s ‘Responsible Business’ or ‘Corporate Social Responsibility’. Certainly, the elements of these concepts that relate to benefiting society and environment as a whole strike a chord, particularly when the business of law supports the project so generously. But the project also goes beyond a single business acting responsibly and we would not achieve our aims or create real world impact if only one firm were to participate. We are, as a profession, addressing a systemic issue in a way that is aligned to our businesses and clients. In truth the Project is probably a mixture of all these concepts. Lawyers engage because we can use our transactional legal skills and experience to help address one of the urgent and important issues of the day – the climate crisis – in a way that is aligned to our businesses, benefiting the communities we live and work in. We are happy to provide this for free because Pro Bono is part of the DNA of the legal profession and part of being a responsible legal business. We have coined this blend of concepts ‘Legal Philanthropy’. ‘“ Legal Philanthropy ” describes a lawyer who uses their skills, without charge, to help solve systemic issues for the benefit of society and the environment’
Thank you to all the Legal Philanthropists involved in the Project.
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