We are dedicated to making improvements that foster a sustainable future and lead to social and economic improvements within our firm, in our surrounding areas, and for all our stakeholders in the interest of long-term sustainability, social responsibility, and environmental integrity.

At Cleary, we promote green-friendly practices and pursue voluntary initiatives toward the goal of minimizing the firm’s impact on our environment. We are continually evaluating new ways to improve our operations and achieve better environmental performance by taking steps to reduce waste, manage consumption of water and electricity, and monitor the environmental impact of our buildings and our travel.

In support of these initiatives, we have formed a cross-functional working group tasked with accelerating our global sustainability efforts. Our cross-functional working group continues to explore ways to further reduce the firm’s carbon footprint and achieve the ambitious science-based targets the firm has set.

Key Actions

  • We recognize the importance of setting a goal to measure the progress of the emission reduction efforts we’ve made to date. For this reason, in 2024, we set both near-term and net-zero science-based emissions reduction targets, which have been approved by the Science Based Target Initiative (SBTi). As we work toward decarbonizing our operations, the firm has purchased carbon credits annually to cover a portion of the firm’s emissions since 2021, and we plan to do so going forward in our pursuit of net-zero operations.
    • Near-Term Target: Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP commits to reduce absolute scope 1 and 2 GHG emissions 75% by 2030 from a 2022 base year. Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP also commits to reduce absolute scope 3 GHG emissions 42% within the same timeframe.
    • Net-Zero Target: Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP commits to reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions across the value chain by 2040.
  • In 2023, the firm introduced an initiative to increase the transparency of the sustainability performance and the ecological footprint of our supply chain. To facilitate this effort, the firm has chosen EcoVadis to conduct individual sustainability performance assessments of our suppliers.
  • In 2022, we undertook a global initiative to calculate greenhouse gas emissions for 2019, 2020, and 2021. These calculations have helped us to understand high sources of emissions within our operations. These results served as the foundation of our Climate Action Plan, which identifies future action to mitigate our carbon footprint across scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions. In 2023, the firm continued to enhance its global Climate Action Plan by providing each office with action plans specific to the emissions profiles of their operations.
  • In 2021, we worked with a third-party consultant to enhance our internal sustainability efforts. At the outset of the project, the consultants led us through strategic exercises to evaluate our firm’s existing ESG program. This involved industry benchmarking, an internal gap assessment, and a stakeholder-driven materiality assessment. Taken together, these sources of information served to highlight areas for development within the firm’s ESG practices at the time, as well as to identify priorities as our firm considered action moving forward.
  • We are a member of the Law Firm Sustainability Network, the Legal Sustainability Alliance, the Net Zero Lawyer Alliance, and Trellis Network (formerly the GreenBiz Executive Network). We disclose annually to CDP and EcoVadis.