How can the business love legal?

‘How can the business love legal?’ is the title of one sessions of the 19th Economist General Counsel summit, and it’s becoming clearer by the week that by taking leadership on climate and ESG issues, GCs and their teams are powerfully answering this question due to their actions.

Furthermore, they are clearly living the values of the event theme - ‘Risk. Resilience. Leadership’.?Helping drive net zero and other ESG goals reduces corporate risk, builds business resilience and through this proves the growing value of the legal team's leadership.

The summit is on 1st November in London, when over 300 attendees will gather to discuss a wide variety of topics, and Lawyers for Net Zero are delighted to be an official supporting organisation.?Our CEO, Adam Woodhall is hosting the fireside chat on ‘Beyond Law’, and we have a number of participants and alumni from our Impact Programme speaking during the day, such as the GCs of Zurich Insurance UK, E.ON UK and Cambridge University Press.

Over the dozens of sessions, prominent GCs and leaders in their area will be discussing issues they see affecting their companies and legal teams.?Climate and ESG are sure to come up regularly both because of their huge impact, and because increasingly GCs are stepping up to the plate and helping deliver the necessary change.

‘GC and the race to net zero’, ‘Greening the supply chain—what can in-house legal do?’ ‘The G in ESG’ and ‘The S in ESG’ are four obviously relevant sessions, but the themes of climate and ESG also thread through the wider discussions of risk management, value creation and navigating uncertainty.

GCs Creating Value

This event is showcasing that the GC role is moving on from the outdated assumption that the legal team is a cost centre with a reactionary mind set.?Value creation is a key theme running through the summit, for example with a panel titled ‘From legal risk management into value creation’.

Protecting the company against costly litigation is still a primary role of GCs but the urgency of climate and ESG issues as well as geopolitical volatility has paved the way for GCs to show real value in generating momentum and leadership in these areas. This is illustrated by the first panel of the day: ‘Understanding, quantifying and mitigating geopolitical risk’ and the session ‘The commercial rule of law and geopolitical risk’ will include a section on climate change and ESG-related challenges.

The roundtable ‘Finding opportunity in uncertainty: Growth strategies in turbulent times’ will be discussing trust and transparency with a note in the agenda that “More than two-thirds of chief executives face calls for more reporting and transparency on ESG issues.”

GCs navigating uncertainty

GCs can help companies to navigate this uncertain landscape in volatile times as well as highlighting the inherent opportunities in taking decisive action on climate and ESG.

Legal teams ?have been key in helping ?to balance ?legal and regulatory requirements with a company’s commercial needs but now they increasingly have a role as conscience of the company and must also balance the ethical side by asking what is “the right thing to do?”.?

This is illustrated by session on ‘Ethics, regulation and reputation’. As in-house lawyers work across different business areas and functions, they have a rare, holistic view of the company and access to a wide network of senior leaders.

GCs holistic view

It is this holistic view of the workings of the company that allow GCs to ensure a company’s operations are aligned with its ethics and values, protecting it from accusations of greenwashing. This concept forms one of the core components of the Lawyers for Net Zero Impact Programme.

It is also an opportunity for GCs to weave ESG principles into the commercial operations in such a way that the business creates impact, as the Greening the Supply Chain session will discuss. In-house counsel have direct influence over the supply chain, how the companies contract with each other and the overarching governance structures that sit above this.

This is sure to be an excellent event and Lawyers for Net Zero are proud to be associated with it.

Find out more about the GC Summit on his link.

Learn more about our Impact Programme by getting in touch with us here.