For decades, law firms have prided themselves on their public service and pro bono activities. If you look at the hamburger menu on the homepage of any Big Law website, you’ll find a tab for the pro bono page, with language describing how public service is a tradition “deeply rooted” or “woven into the fabric” of the firm’s culture. In more recent years, Diversity, Inclusion and Equity (DEI) has landed its own page on the menu, reflecting the importance firms have placed on creating truly inclusive workplaces. But among firms in the United States, there’s historically been less of a focus on other responsible business activities, including Environmental, Social & Governance (ESG) perspectives.

A recently released, in-depth study is shining the spotlight on the responsible business strategies at 215 leading law firms, including the Am Law 100 firms, top 100 UK firms and 15 leading Canadian firms. The 2024 Annual Report, compiled by Lamp House Strategy, which is a part of Chambers and Partners, benchmarked firms based on content on their websites, including specific responsible business reports, during July and August 2024.

The report, now in its second year, found that there has been significant progress in the overall market over the past year, with more than a quarter of the firms analyzed in 2023 improving their market position on responsible business practices.

Methodology

Lamp House researchers assessed firms using a legal industry-specific framework, comprising 180+ responsible business activities focused on three main pillars: Governance, People and Planet. Firms were scored for 95 Governance activities, 69 People activities and 24 Planet activities.

Under the responsible business framework, Planet activities included energy and waste reduction strategies; setting carbon reduction targets; and measuring scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions.

People activities included the standard law firm affinity groups for women, ethnic minorities and LGBTQ+ colleagues, as well as disability, wellbeing and career progression initiatives.

The Governance pillar looked at activities such as diversity measures and targets, pro bono and social impact, risk monitoring channels, and supply chain management. It was this pillar that drew the lowest average score among law firms.

Challenges Faced

A key principle of Lamp House’s methodology was the desire to reward firms that are transparent and provide evidence that they are taking meaningful, substantive action and making progress toward responsible business goals.

In acknowledging that every firm has different factors influencing their performance and every firm is starting its journey from different points, though, Lamp House chose not to score firms on actual results of key indicators (like the percentage of diverse partners) or being too prescriptive about the exact strategies firms must implement.

Particularly with global and international firms, researchers recognized that it can be difficult to implement strategies on a firm-wide basis. For example, firms were not penalized in the scoring for being unable to report on certain diversity statistics at a firm-wide level.

Another factor researchers considered was the recent legal challenges to DEI initiatives in the United States. They responded by creating a framework to allow the analysis of U.S. firms based on metrics that did not include any affirmative action initiatives aimed at specific protected groups.

Despite those legal challenges in U.S. courts and pushback against the responsible business agenda, the report found that U.S. law firms have continued to make significant strides forward over the past year.

And the Winners Are …

The report’s overall winner, DWF, achieved more than 60% of the available points in the survey, while five firms at the bottom of the scale amassed a total score of 1% or less. DWF was also the individual overall leader in two of the three pillars — People and Governance — with DLA Piper (International) taking the top spot in Planet for the second consecutive year.

Among firms headquartered in the United States, Baker McKenzie claimed the most points overall in the report, with Sidley Austin, Winston & Strawn, Latham & Watkins, and Morrison Foerster all performing in the top 5% of the U.S. legal market.

Firms that scored in the top 10% of the U.S. legal market were White & Case; Eversheds Sutherland (U.S.); Weil, Gotshal & Manges; O’Melveny & Myers; and Willkie Farr & Gallagher.

U.S. overall leader Baker McKenzie was lauded for some of its firm-wide initiatives, including its partnership sponsorship program for women and ethnic minorities. Lamp House also found that it is the only firm disclosing U.S.-specific targets for increasing equity partner representation among ethnic minorities and one of the few U.S. firms to have conducted a materiality assessment with its stakeholders, which guides its overall strategy and reporting.

Within the individual streams, Baker McKenzie also was ranked the leading U.S. firm for People and Governance, with Morrison Foerster improving its position significantly to become the overall U.S. leading firm for Planet.

Taking a collective look at all three pillars, Planet is the one where most U.S. firms have improved over the last year. The average score for Planet doubled compared to 2023, with more U.S. firms taking foundational steps to measure their emissions and set carbon reduction targets.

While the report finds a clear group of leading firms in responsible business activities, it also revealed that there is a lot of space for U.S. firms to differentiate their responsible business strategies. If a firm at the upper end of the bottom 50% of firms increased its total score by only 6 percentage points, it would leap into the top 25%.

In Conclusion

You may be thinking that your firm has very robust responsible business programs and wondering why it didn’t score higher in the study. It is important to remind firms that researchers based their findings on external communications data found on law firm websites. Of the 215 firm websites analyzed for the study, 60% now publish some kind of responsible business report compared to just 38% in 2023.

If you haven’t updated your website materials lately, now may be a good time to re-examine how your firm is communicating its commitment to responsible business strategies. Reach out to me, Kathy King, at kking@jaffepr.com to learn more about responsible business strategies for your law firm and how to communicate your progress and successes.