Partners for Climate Impact: Experiences from the Sustainability Business Clinic

Presenter

Brad Jessup, Melbourne Law School

Kate Fischer Doherty, Melbourne Law School

Session Description

The Sustainability Business Clinic is a green enterprise clinic run by Melbourne Law School in partnership with global law firm Ashurst. Over its first eight years, the clinic has provided legal advice, research support, and community legal information to more than 30 new and emerging not-for-profit enterprises and for-purpose businesses with a shared mission to reduce consumption, reduce local environmental impacts, and avert the climate crisis. The Sustainability Business Clinic has provided practical and supervised legal experiences to almost 100 later year Juris Doctor students who have a widely shared desire to learn how to be an effective lawyer in our current climate conflicted times.

This paper we will present the Sustainability Business Clinic as a model for transactional climate clinical partnerships and an example of a clinic building student climate resilience. The Sustainability Business Clinic is one way law school clinical programs can effect and support policy and regulatory change, build institutional ecosystems, and facilitate business action, to tackle climate problems. Using data and narratives obtained from our law firm partner and a client case study we will demonstrate the climate impact of the clinic in tandem with its partners. Using student reflections, we will also suggest that, and identify how, the Sustainability Business Clinic builds in students a confidence to use law and their legal skills in manifold and multiple ways to contribute to societal efforts to combat climate change outside of the court room.

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