Some See Career Conundrum in Law Firms' Energy Work
With growing awareness of the threat of climate change, law professors said environmentally minded students are paying close attention to the fossil-fuel matters being handled by potential Big Law employers.
July 12, 2018 at 02:11 PM
4 minute read
Image: Fotolia Naomi Ages was happy to land at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher in New York after graduating from law school at the University of Southern California in 2010. The global financial crisis was still roiling the legal industry, and while some classmates saw their start dates deferred, she was able to start right on schedule at the firm where she worked as a summer associate. And while Ages went to law school with a goal to pursue public interest work, she wanted to return to the East Coast, and nonprofits and NGOs had few resources for cross-country recruiting. It was only after she started looking for a job outside of Big Law, specifically in the area of environmental advocacy, that she realized her time at the firm might pose a challenge. While Ages ultimately landed a position as a legal adviser with Greenpeace International, her job search took her two years. She suspects the firm's high-profile work successfully defending Chevron Corp. against multibillion-dollar pollution claims in Ecuador might have played a part in the delay. Naomi Ages. “My best guess is that there was some skepticism. Doing a quick Google search would have revealed a lot,” she said. “But I don't know if that's specific to Gibson Dunn or any law firm.” Some law school professors are concerned enough about the potential stigma that they are advising environmentally conscious students to weigh the consequences of a career stop at firms with a heavy roster of fossil fuel clients. Potential recruits, meanwhile, may be put off by certain firms' aggressive tactics on behalf of their energy clients. Not Tobacco In spite of scientific predictions that climate change driven by human activity is likely to send global temperatures upwards by several degrees by the end of the century, survey data presents mixed messages over how salient the issue is for millennials. "Energy work broadly defined, including representation of utilities and even major oil and natural gas companies, has not yet seemed to trigger that same reaction in students looking for private sector employment in the Big Law firms, which frequently have a very wide client base that include that industry among many others," he said in an email. Hunton & Williams Students do tend to identify coal more specifically as antithetical to their personal concerns with climate and sustainability and do seem to shy away from firms with significant practices representing the coal industry, or at least seek assurances they can avoid those clients," Lazarus said. They realize that if an energy company is a big client of the firm, it's going to be much harder to do a thing that could be perceived as a business conflict, let alone a true legal conflict that involves adverse position," Sivas said. continuing New Generation It was just really interesting the number of students who are saying, 'I don't have a big environmental background, but I can't believe what [Ryan] Zinke, [Scott] Pruitt and [Donald] Trump are doing," she said. Aggressive Advocacy Kasowitz Torres Benson sing law firms to silence protest. It's a really troubling trend," she said. "Had I been working in Big Law, it would have been disturbing." Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison The new, more aggressive, litigation tactics are off-putting to many current students," Lazarus said, specifically pointing to attacks on state AGs and environmentalists over their suits against industry. A Call to the Bar Pepper Hamilton "I'm concerned that law firms could be induced in the pursuit of their own economic interest to take positions that are inimical to human society," he said.
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