What Lawyers Can Do to Step Up for the Climate and Add Clients

No matter their practice area or role, any lawyer can prioritize climate issues and clients while bringing more satisfaction and meaning to their careers and lives. Yet, I haven’t always had a climate-focused practice, and I haven’t always found satisfaction and meaning in my career.

I worked to build a legal practice that includes climate companies and causes, and I learned to cultivate purpose and passion in my work. It took many years and a daily commitment to my values and growth. The result has been a diverse practice with meaningful work in a variety of climate and non-climate areas. My path might be helpful to yours as you ponder how to maximize client opportunities in today’s fast-moving environmental sectors.

Climate Lawyering

When meeting with a lawyer who is interested in doing climate work, the conversation frequently begins with greenhouse gas emissions, sustainability plans, and climate change litigation. While these are exciting topics, the opportunity to work on these issues is limited for lawyers. Focusing solely on these topics ignores the myriad other ways that lawyers can contribute to climate companies and causes.

Climate companies and causes need lawyers from all practice areas and experience levels.

As an example, one of my initial focus areas was food waste reduction and recycling. My home state of New Jersey began focusing on food waste when I was looking for opportunities to work on climate. Project Drawdown identified food waste reduction as the highest impact solution to keep temperature rise to 2°C by 2100 in its 2022 report—a mix of opportunity and ability to have impact.

There are opportunities to support various stakeholders in the food waste industry, including small- and medium-sized businesses, investors and private equity firms, and environmental NGOs. These stakeholders need advice that combines knowledge of food waste with a variety of subject matters such as mergers and acquisitions, labor and employment, intellectual property, environmental permitting and compliance, and real estate.

Food waste is just one solution for addressing climate change, and is a relatively small community, but the possibility for impact and the opportunity for lawyers is substantial. While this is just one example, it shows the breadth of potential impact within a narrow climate-focused industry. Renewable energy is another big focus for lawyers, whether it’s working in-house for a renewable energy developer, serving as outside counsel, or working in government or at an NGO that’s focused on renewable energy.

However, as with greenhouse gas emissions and some of the more obvious climate opportunities, your view of climate lawyering shouldn’t be limited to renewable energy. You will have much more meaning and success if you find a sphere of the climate world that resonates with you specifically, and balance renewable energy against other options and opportunities. What industry sparks your specific passion for climate?

Climate Work For All

When I graduated from law school, traditional wisdom was that to practice environmental law, you either worked in a private practice for the “bad guys” or made very little money in government or at NGOs working for the “good guys.”

This is an outdated view. By thinking more broadly about climate work, you can accept that there are lots of ways to support climate companies and causes. Many of those options are only available to attorneys in private practice or in-house roles.

For those of you in private practice, it may seem daunting to add climate work to your position. You may think your firm doesn’t have climate clients, or you don’t know where to start.

An easy solution to all these things, something that most firms and the legal community support intrinsically, is pro bono work. Several years ago, I faced a big problem. None of my clients were involved in climate issues.

Through pro bono work I figured I could find a climate-friendly project and start my journey as a lawyer for the planet immediately. And I could do this without having to make drastic changes to my career or find a business that needed my help (and would take a chance on a then-junior attorney).

So I talked to my network and found a nonprofit that needed legal assistance in the climate space. The next day, I was working on an important issue for the planet and my community.

I have seen pro bono opportunities that are accessible to all lawyers. While there is always a need for specialized expertise ranging from labor and employment to intellectual property, there are also many opportunities that just require basic lawyering skills, such as how to write simple commercial contracts or form a nonprofit.

Along those lines, climate lawyering should be accessible to everyone, and pro bono projects can be part of an overall career development strategy that provides immediate satisfaction while also helping to grow skills, networks, and recognition that lead to a thriving private practice.

While I encourage lawyers to make shifts in their career to focus on climate work, lawyers sometimes get stuck in this spot. They wait to begin their climate journey while they look for a new position, without seizing on the multitude of minor shifts that can improve their careers, and make it more likely they will get a climate job given the competitive job market.

It helps to join an industry group to improve your grasp of a specific climate industry. Write articles that help the exact companies and causes you want to represent. Learn new skills from courses, certifications, or continuing legal education. Whatever it is, do something to grow your climate knowledge and skills.

When you’re ready, and if you really want to make a career change, finding climate law opportunities and jobs can be a little challenging, but that’s fun too, right? Try these tips.

These are just a few ways to have more impact on the planet with your legal skills. Every lawyer can have an impact.

This article does not necessarily reflect the opinion of Bloomberg Industry Group, Inc., the publisher of Bloomberg Law and Bloomberg Tax, or its owners.

Author Information

Matthew Karmel is chair of the environmental and sustainability law group at Offit Kurman and founder of the Planetary Lawyer Project newsletter.

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