Our Sustainability

In today’s world, sustainability issues are of critical importance to business. We’re helping our clients transition to, and thrive in, a more sustainable future. We ask tough questions about purpose and transparency and find the answers together.

We’re also looking for opportunities to integrate sustainability into our governance, decision-making and operations.

In 2022 we completed our first double-materiality assessment, and in 2025 we're completing our second. This helped us to identify our first set of 15 material sustainability issues. Our plans continue to evolve and we will revisit this exercise. Our strategic priorities are to decarbonise our business operations and develop a climate transition plan, become a workplace where everyone can thrive, take action on social impact and be a trusted ethical business partner.

We have an evolving role we play in a low-carbon economy and remain committed to developing a transition plan that builds on the decarbonisation of our direct operations, guided by the Transition Plan Taskforce (TPT) Disclosure Framework.

Our initial modelling of climate-related risks and opportunities have allowed us to better understand where climate can affect our business through physical impacts such as extreme weather events and transition risks such as regulatory changes and market shifts.

Our long-term commitment remains unchanged to reach Net Zero by 2040, with an interim goal of reducing our emissions by 50% by 2030, based on a revised FY20 baseline.

We’ve already reduced our total emissions by 35%, against our FY20 baseline, including a 44% drop in energy-related emissions and a 57% reduction in air travel emissions. Our supply chain emissions have also decreased by 33%.

To decarbonise our business, we’re focused on transforming it in five areas:

• implementing our Thoughtful Travel campaign to reduce emissions by 75% by 2030
• working with suppliers to reduce emissions on our supply chain by 25% by 2030
• switching to renewable electricity across Europe by 2025, and all offices by 2030
• optimising energy use in our offices
• designing future workspaces with sustainability and health in mind

Our biggest potential contribution to global decarbonisation efforts is by helping clients on their own net zero journeys. We’re ensuring our approach to client work is aligned with our climate ambition, including how we map and measure advised emissions as we develop our climate transition plan. 

Our environmental actions are aligned with locally and internationally recognised standards and initiatives, including:

• certification to ISO 14001, ISO 50001 and the Carbon Trust’s Route to Net Zero standard
• the UN Global Compact
• The Legal Renewables Initiative in the UK
• Business Ambition for 1.5°C.

At DLA Piper EMEA and Asia Pacific, we remain committed to inclusion and positive social impact.

We believe in the power of inclusion and positive social impact and the influence it has on our people, our clients, and the communities where we work. Our underlying principles and values have not changed. We recognise that now more than ever we need to evolve so we can stay focused on the impact that we are committed to making.

Discover how we promote an inclusive culture.

Law firms can have an impact on society. This can be through the advice they give to organisations, businesses and individuals to solve legal challenges, their contribution to the economy, their supply chain, and their recruitment. They may also contribute to programmes run by not-for-profit organisations for the greater good.

It’s important that we understand our societal impacts so that we know where to focus and improve our efforts. Measuring societal impact can be challenging. Unlike environmental impact, which can be measured by science-based targets, societal impact is not often measured in a standardised way. It can also depend on specific contexts.

We exist in several geographies where societies differ and face unique challenges. This means our impacts vary depending on how and where we do things. Another key challenge is that we don’t always have clear visibility on the impact of our work. In the case of our pro bono strategy, for example, the impact may not be immediately obvious and could come in the long term.

This means understanding our societal impact is an ongoing process.

Our programs

Head Start

Talent is everywhere, but opportunity is not. People from some demographics and communities still face challenges in accessing the legal profession. Head Start – a flagship community investment programme to help aspiring lawyers who may face these challenges – has run for a number of years in countries including the United Kingdom and Kenya.

Head Start helps Scholars fulfil their ambitions for any career in law, whether it’s working for a not-for profit organisation or as an in-house lawyer for another type of business.

Find out more

Global Scholarships

Launched in 2017, our Global Scholarships Program nurtures future lawyers and builds legal capacity in developing countries. Delivered with the Bingham Centre for the Rule of Law and the Saïd Business School, the programme contributes to embedding the rule of law in underserved regions.

Each year, the firm supports students of the programme in Africa, South and West Asia, the South Pacific and Latin America. Over their bespoke two-year scholarship, students have their full tuition paid and receive mentoring and training to develop their skills, confidence and networks.

Find out more

Sustainability issues present major risks and opportunities to companies, and leading global corporations recognise that profit and purpose are interdependent. For businesses to be successful in the long term, they must also deliver social value. There’s a growing expectation for all businesses – including law firms – to make a positive contribution to society and the environment, and to report on their impact.

As a professional services organisation, our business is focused on delivering for our clients. Our client work is also where we have the biggest opportunity to drive positive social and environmental change. As with other sectors, advisors to business are under increasing pressure to account for the difference their advice makes in terms of sustainability. So integrating sustainability risk governance into our client offering is strategically important to our firm.

We’re committed to fully integrating sustainability considerations into our mainstream business risk management processes, with a special focus on our approach to client work. Like many organisations, we’re exploring how our governance structures can best achieve this – and where we need to make changes.

Our aim is to help drive best practice in the legal sector for sustainability reporting. We know that credibility depends on transparency, so we aim to give a clear and balanced account of our performance. This means we're not just highlighting our achievements but also being up-front about the challenges we face and areas for improvement.

We are maintaining on our all aspects of our sustainability, which remains core to who we are and how we operate.

This report sets out our sustainability vision, goals, and priorities, and shares the actions we’re taking, the impact we’re making, and the areas where we still have work to do.

We also set out some of the strategic sustainability reviews underway, such as progressing our second double materiality assessment and re- baselining our carbon emissions. But sustainability is more than strategy and metrics and the aim of this report is to explain our challenges and evidence our progress openly and rigorously, as we work to drive meaningful change.

Learn more about our sustainability reporting