Paul Weiss Launches a Corporate Sustainability Practice

Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison has created a new practice group to help corporate boards and executives navigate the legal, business and political aspects of developing and implementing sustainability initiatives, the firm said late Wednesday.

The sustainability and environmental, social and governance advisory group will be managed by former litigator and business executive David Curran, a new hire.

“Dave is an authority on the challenges and opportunities” that environmental, social and governance issues present for businesses, firm Chairman Brad S. Karp said in a statement. “He has worked with many of the world’s leading companies as they embrace corporate and social responsibility.”

Business leaders are facing greater pressure to increase their organizations’ resilience while, at the same time, address social issues that matter to customers, investors and other stakeholders, Karp said.

“I suppose the ‘aha’ moment was when the Business Roundtable last August publicly shifted the purpose of a corporation away from maximizing short-term shareholder profits to focusing on the long-term benefits for all stakeholders,” Karp said in an interview. The roundtable’s statement was signed by 181 chief executive officers.

Karp said the firm had been thinking about forming an ESG practice for some months and that he’d emphasized the importance of such a practice at the Paul Weiss partners meeting last fall in New York. He said that about 20 percent to 25 percent of his own practice involved such matters, “broadly defined.”

The firm—which has offices in Beijing, Hong Kong, Tokyo, London and Washington—was established in New York more than 100 years ago.

“Much of what I do day-to-day is provide governance advice. And recently, the demand for such advice has skyrocketed due to the novel and nuanced issues arising every day from the coronavirus pandemic, questions that would have been unimaginable even six weeks ago,” Karp said.

Other law firms with similar practices include Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, which last year formed a global sustainability team with lawyers from its transactional, regulatory and dispute resolution practices. Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld also has an environmental, social and governance group.

The new Paul Weiss unit will draw on existing firm attorneys to work with clients to advance programs that improve corporate culture, increase employee morale, strengthen customer loyalty and enhance stakeholder relations, and other objectives, Karp said.

Curran will coordinate efforts to advise on corporate governance, crisis management, corporate ethics and responsibility. “This is the perfect opportunity to combine Paul Weiss’s renowned talent and expertise with my focus on helping complex organizations address some of their most complex challenges with modern, impactful solutions,” he said.

Curran has been senior vice president and chief business officer at FiscalNote, a legal artificial intelligence/technology company and global director for risk and compliance for Thomson Reuters, according to his LinkedIn profile. He holds the title of chief sustainability and ESG officer at Paul Weiss.