You can imagine the number of times lawyers hear the phrase, "Can I have that in writing?" Between all the legal memos and documents, one lawyer could use as much as a half-ton of paper a year, according to the American Bar Association.
Last year the group joined the EPA to launch a program to help lawyers become more environmentally responsible. And then just last month, a group of attorneys released the Green Guide for Lawyers. One of those attorneys, Dave Scott, with Luper Neidenthal and Logan in Columbus, Ohio, recently joined GreenBiz Radio to discuss the guide, sustainability in the legal profession, and the ways in which his law firm is trying to make its operations greener.
Tilde Herrera: Hey, Dave. Welcome to the program.
David Scott: Thanks, Tilde. Great to be here.
TH: Now just generally speaking, how would you describe the legal community's awareness of sustainability or environmental issues?
DS: I would say that I was generally surprised in both ways. I was surprised in many respects at how members of the legal community -- certain members of the legal community -- are advanced. They are ahead of the curve. They have been thinking about these issues and considering them, and they've been trying to do something about them.
At the same time, I was also surprised at the level to which many -- I would even go so far as to say most firms -- it's not even on the radar yet.
TH: Can you talk a little bit about Meritas and why this topic was chosen?
DS: Sure. Meritas is an international affiliation of firms. There are about 6,000 or so lawyers in 60 different countries. So basically, it's a huge group of attorneys with a unified administrative structure. Meritas developed what was called the Leadership Institute. That's where a group of 10 attorneys, typically older associates or newer partners, came together to do a project, and the project is basically for the greater good of the Meritas Organization or member firms.
Our group was given a list of topics and we decided to go off that list, and our chosen project was to explore issues related to sustainability, considering the new sustainability trends, new industries that are being created, existing industries that are evolving. What kinds of challenges are these new or evolving industries facing in the realm of sustainability? Specifically, what kind of legal challenges are they having, and what can Meritas as an organization and what can Meritas member firms try to do themselves to try to help these businesses try to meet those challenges?
TH: Why do you think sustainability is important for the legal community?
DS: The short answer for that is it's important to lawyers because it's important to our clients. Of course, you're always going to have, if I'm going to over-generalize, I'd say two different groups -- your true believers and your bottom-liners.
Your true believers are folks who are going to buy into the environmental cause no matter what because it's part of their makeup. You're going to have your bottom liners who truly don’t care at all about the environment or sustainability, or any of these issues.
And my personal goal was to try to see if there's any way to synergize those two concepts. Is there a way to explain to lawyers that sustainability is important, whether it's important to your clients because your clients are interested in it, or companies -- anyone from Wal-Mart to BP to Whole Foods to any company that has sustainability as part of its mission -- whether it's for an altruistic purpose or for a profit purpose? I don't think Wal-Mart really has made much of a – of a ruse of saying the reason we're doing this is because at the end of the day, it's going to save us money.
So if companies like Wal-Mart or anyone in the energy or construction industry are attuned to these issues, then shouldn't lawyers also be attuned to those issues? And if lawyers are going to talk the talk and try to convince these clients to use their firm's services, then should they not also walk the walk? And that was kind of the genesis of the Green Guide, which was to say that if a law firm is willing and committed to take these steps, well, then here's what you can do to try to be a little bit more sustainable.
And my firm, willing or not, kind of became the guinea pig in a lot of ways. And we've been pleasantly surprised to see that we not only are realizing benefits as far as decreased costs for materials, mostly related to paper. That's the driving force behind law firms is paper. But also as far as client development perspective, because companies that are out there on the leading edge and are thinking about these issues, we have found them to be very – very open to the idea of using a law firm or engaging a law firm that's also got the same kind of mindset.
TH: So it not only aligns your business practices with your clients' values, but it also opens up potential new markets?
DS: Absolutely, because that's one of the two different aspects of the sustainability trend was businesses that are existing but are evolving. Energy is a great example of that. Construction is another great example of that. We've had tremendous innovations as far as the energy industry, alternative fuels, things like that.
In the construction industry, we've seen the explosion of green building through the United States Green Building Council and the LEED certification program. So there are two established industries that are evolving. And the evolving industries are also right now, as far as green construction in particular, is a tremendous growth industry. So you're going to have companies that are into green construction are expanding. You're seeing many new companies coming into that. So yeah, that's one area that that we've found is worthwhile for lawyers to try to market.
TH: How long did it take to create the guide?
DS: The Leadership Institute project itself was the better part of a year. I'm not going to say that the Green Guide itself required that much time, but the evolution of it, it probably is somewhat modeled after the American Bar Association Environmental Protection Agency Climate Challenge, as far as trying to identify and recognize firms that are willing to take these steps. We had to go outside of the attorney/law office arena, because we really hadn't found anything comparable to t his that was targeted to law firms, and addressing the somewhat unique challenges that law firms are going to have.
TH: How would you describe the environmental footprint of your typical legal firm?
DS: The typical firm, I think that the bugaboo for lawyers is and, for a lot of intents and purposes, probably always will be paper because lawyers seem to think that every thought we have is sacred and it must be memorialized with a piece of paper or it didn't really happen.
And that's a mindset that's been drilled into us. You need to have your paper copy. You need to put your paper copy in your physical file. You need to keep your physical file on-site for a certain period of time. Then you have to ship your physical file off-site and keep it there in fireproof storage basically forever, because you never know when you'll need it.
That's maybe a little bit of an overstatement, but not that much from my experience. So challenging those ideas and getting lawyers to let go of their pieces of paper is a pretty big challenge. And again, with my firm being the guinea pig, we created our own proprietary computer software program. We back it up every night so there's a high level of confidence that we've been able to develop over time that allows us then to take that piece of paper and -- you know, clenching it to the very last second -- throwing it away because you don't necessarily need it.
But beyond that, there are lots of things that law firms can do. There's bottled water. You still go to plenty of firms that are offering bottled water when filtered water for many, many reasons is superior. You've got Energy Star appliances. Even if a firm is a tenant in a building, you can still, according to many leases, use Energy Star equipment.
You can – again, back to paper, you can implement a double-sided copying policy for internal documents. Many lawyers are going to respond that that's not feasible because most courts absolutely will not accept double-sided copies. But again, that's more of a logistical issue as far as just taking your duplexer and your copier and turning it on or off for a given project.
Law firms can use recycled toner cartridges. They can install CF light bulbs. They can use recycled batteries, recycled – or rechargeable batteries instead of alkaline batteries for your small equipment.
So there are a number of things that firms can do that are not that onerous, and even on an individual firm basis, may not be all that significant. But if you extrapolate it out, and if many, many firms can start doing these things, then you start to make a difference, which, again, kind of takes us back to the Meritas concept. If a group of 6,000-plus lawyers can decide to do these things, now you might be starting to make a meaningful difference.
TH: Now how would you describe the Green Guide? It's set up in three tiers. Can you talk a little bit about those tiers?
DS: Sure. They're a function of what we call the triple bottom line. People, planet, and profit is the basic outline. There are three different tiers, and the tiers are simply a reflection of the type of commitment that a firm would need to make.
The steps that are part of tier three are pretty aspirational. I think that a law firm would need to make a very serious commitment in order to be a tier three level firm. I wouldn't necessarily say that tier one is easy, but there is a commitment that's involved in it. And we wanted to make it so that it's not viewed as such a high hurdle to get to that nobody's going to want to even try, but at the same time, balance that tension against it being so easy, you know, you might have a question of gee, what's even the point? Anyone can do this.
TH: You said that your firm served sort of as a guinea pig to make sure that some of these initiatives were practical. You mentioned a few. Can you elaborate?
DS: Sure. I mentioned our paperless filing system, which is part of the proprietary file management software that our firm developed. So we actually have made a significant investment in developing our own computer software, which, it does some unique things.
There are many firms now that can accept incoming faxes, for example, by email. What we can do is every fax that comes into our firm is received by email, and then it can actually be imported directly from email into a particular file. So instead of an email or a fax being sent in and the fax being printed, and then someone having to walk the fax down the hall to the attorney, and then the attorney maybe making three or four copies and sending out to the other associates or partners who may be involved -- instead, it's a very simple process of the fax comes in by email, it's put into the appropriate file and then it can be emailed from there instead of printed out.
We recycle all the paper in our office. We employ a shredding service that recycles 100 percent of our documents. We do have a mandatory double-sided copying policy. We use paper that exceeds federal post-consumer content requirements. Right now, we're at 35 percent post-consumer content. We've switched to CF light bulbs. We recycle toner cartridges in printers. We use rechargeable batteries.
We created what's called a Conservation Corner, and that's kind of a neat thing. We have a couple of our employees are what I would call true believers. They're very motivated to the green cause, and one of them is also a fantastic writer. And she developed what we call the Conservation Corner. It's a weekly feature of our newsletter that offers tips as far as things that you can do, both at home and in the office if you want to try to adopt a more sustainable lifestyle. So, she contributes in that respect.
The firm not only sanctions but tries to support that, and offers her a podium that she can share her thoughts and concepts with other folks who might be interested in doing something like that. Or if they're doing things, then trading ideas with her, and trying to continue that good cycle of not just at home, but at work, trying to become more sustainable in everything we do.
TH: So Dave, where do you see this trend of lawyers trying to green their business practices heading?
DS: I think that lawyers are going to follow the trend of any other business. And in that respect, I think that it will probably be a step-by-step progression, which also mirrors the kind the path that my firm has followed. The first step is the hardest. And someone within a firm needs to decide that this is a worthwhile idea. And if someone can decide that it's a worthwhile idea then hopefully they can encourage that firm to take just one step, or just a couple of steps. Do a couple of little things. Things that just make sense.
For goodness sake, copy on two sides of your paper. Don't print a draft of something, write two little blurbs on it, two little edits on it, and then hand the 20 pages back to your assistant so she can type them out and then print you another copy that you can then change two more things. These things just don't make sense. They're wasteful with no good purpose.
So pick some of that low-hanging fruit. And once you start to do that -- again, my firm, being an example, and from anecdotal evidence of other firms within Meritas that are also doing the same thing -- once you start taking those steps, it's just a natural progression towards wanting to do a couple other little things. And then somebody else coming up with a couple of good ideas. And then they talk with their colleagues at other firms in other states or even other countries, and they come up with better ideas.
So through a process of taking small steps, sharing those steps that you take, collaborating with other firms, it then becomes a collective mentality of ‘Gee, there are other things that we can do.’ And what I hope for the law profession is that other folks out there start taking those first steps. And once they take those first steps, they realize that it's a good idea. They see that other companies who they deal with, clients, existing or potential, recognize and appreciate the fact that lawyers are willing to take these steps, and then they gravitate towards those firms.
And again, it becomes a happy, self-replicating cycle of firms doing more things to be sustainable, realizing not just financial benefits but also the benefits of becoming more sustainable, and then having the external factors of clients and potential clients recognizing and appreciating that, and then that helps the business. And like I said, then it goes round and round. So, that's Dave Scott's utopia, I guess.
TH: When you were first introducing some of these initiatives to your firm, what was the reaction from your colleagues?
DS: Sure. Other than the sideways stares, and the ones who wouldn't even say anything at all -- at least when they were in front of me -- a couple of months after we had started these steps, one of my partners, one of the founders of my firm, came to me and he said that when I first came up with these green ideas, he thought that it was the dumbest thing he had ever heard. So that was one.
My other partner, when he found out what I was doing, we were actually hosting a couple of clients to go play golf in October in Columbus. And on the day that we were playing, it was 75 degrees. And his comment to me was, “Thank God for global warming.” So, he was only half kidding, which is the scary part.
These are some of the people who I think are not uncommon. They're probably more common then your true believers at law firms. And what won them over was savings on the bottom line. We had to spend, I think, it was about 30 percent more to get recycled paper, the 35 percent recycled content paper. We also opened more files last year than we had the year before, but we were still able to save 20 percent in total paper purchases. So we spent more money and we opened more files, but we saved more money because we used less. That's something that resonates with people who couldn't care less about the environment, and are happy about global warming because they get to play golf in October in Columbus.
And the new clients -- that sealed the deal. Most marketing people are going to tell you that it takes about one to two years of consistent, repeated contacts before a new contact can lead to new business. We only started the sustainability initiative with – it was around about the time of the Meritas Leadership Project, so it was less than a year ago. We've already realized two clients for our firm, and one new client that we shipped out to our Meritas affiliate. So three new clients only related to sustainability within one year. Now they're starting to become more true believers.
Tilde Herrera is associate editor at GreenBiz.com.