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ESG—friend or foe?

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18 February 2022 / Clare Hughes-Williams , Sarah Crowther KC
Issue: 7967 / Categories: Opinion , ESG , Environment , Governance
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Environmental, social & governance: Clare Hughes‑Williams & Sarah Crowther on why law firms should keep all three top of the agenda if they want to keep the lights on in the long term

ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) has become a hot topic for businesses across the globe and has seen a meteoric rise in the attention that it receives from business leaders. Law firms are no exception, and there are numerous reasons why they too are (or should be) paying ever closer attention to their ESG credentials.

Although its rise to prominence is a recent phenomenon, ESG and its component parts are not new. ESG emerged as a concept in 2006 when the then secretary-general of the United Nations, Kofi Annan, launched the Principles for Responsible Investors. Those principles were developed with the co-operation of institutional investors and formed the bedrock of ethical investment. This is what we now call ESG.

ESG remained an investment concept until fairly recently. Social inflation has played a prominent role in its

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