Congratulations to Vodafone which has become the first in-house legal team to sign up to the Greener Litigation Associate Member Pledge. The Associate Member Pledge gives organisations which participate in litigation, but which are not litigation businesses, the opportunity to commit to achieving net-zero in their in-house legal departments.

The Associate Member Pledge states: "Our organisation is committed to taking steps to reduce the environmental impact of our business. We support the objectives of the Greener Litigation Pledge. We are committed to minimising the environmental impact of litigation in which we are involved in line with the Greener Litigation Pledge, including requesting any litigation professionals we engage to do the same."

Going forward, it will be interesting to see how many other corporates follow suit and the extent to which this results in an uptick in law firms and chambers signing up to the Greener Litigation Pledge.

The Greener Litigation Pledge was launched just over a year ago, its aim being to take active steps to reduce the environmental impact and emissions of litigation in line with the objective of restricting global warming to 1.5 Celsius. To date, the Greener Litigation Pledge has approximately 70 signatories, which includes law firms, chambers and other litigation professionals. Stevens & Bolton signed up to the Greener Litigation Pledge in January 2022, which widens the scope of our commitment to minimise the carbon footprint of our dispute resolution practice. Similarly, in late 2021, we signed up to Green Pledge, formalising our commitment to minimise the environmental impact of our arbitration practice. You can find out more here and here.