WINNER: Legal Response Initiative

Finalists 2010: Allen & Overy; Baker & McKenzie; Goldman Sachs; Legal Response Initiative; Osborne Clarke; Weightmans

The Legal Response Initiative (LRI) is the result of collaboration among lawyers based at Oxfam GB and World Wildlife Fund UK and a number of law firms and barristers' chambers. Its purpose is to provide pro bono legal advice to non-governmental organisations (NGOs) taking part in the ongoing United Nations climate change negotiations. By doing so it seeks to redress the imbalance between the level of legal representation enjoyed by the world's richest nations and the advice at the disposal of the least developed nations, who rely on NGOs to support them.

The LRI provided legal advice at last year's Barcelona and Copenhagen sessions and two sessions in Bonn this year. Liaison offices based at the conferences passed on legal queries to a 'situation room' in the London office of Simmons & Simmons. They were then passed to a network of lawyers from over 40 different organisations based in more than 10 jurisdictions around the world. Legal disciplines deployed include public international law, human rights, trade law, carbon trading and regulation, financing and intellectual property law.

The initiative has already had a tangible impact on the negotiation process. For example, a proposed financial structure created by LRI volunteers from three different City firms was successfully used by delegates to demonstrate that there were viable alternatives for delivering climate finance besides the World Bank.

The initiative has also been enthusiastically endorsed by the Climate Action Network, which represents more than 400 environmental NGOs and now receives regular LRI legal updates.