Sustainability & Corporate Responsibility
Building resilient and compliant organizations.
Today more than ever, companies recognize the connection between sustainability and long-term value. A well-executed sustainability and corporate responsibility strategy adds value, ensures compliance, reduces risks, and builds resilience.
Perkins Coie’s Sustainability and Corporate Responsibility team understands the challenges of translating these values into actionable corporate policies, procedures, and behaviors. Our lawyers draw on significant experience in multiple related practices, including Corporate Governance, Investment Management, Environment, Energy & Resources, Labor & Employment, Advertising, Marketing & Promotions; and White Collar & Investigations, to help businesses across industries realize benefits and avoid risks. Our comprehensive guidance to clients earned us recognition as Environment Law Firm of the Year by Chambers USA in 2023.
Significant change is on the horizon for public and private companies, investment advisers, and registered investment funds. The U.S. Securities Exchange Commission and the state of California have adopted climate disclosure rules. The European Union has adopted the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive, the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive, and the Taxonomy for Sustainable Activities. In addition to regulatory requirements, investors, clients, and customers are pushing companies to examine their environmental, social, and governance policies. Companies continue to voluntarily implement impressive sustainability programs and make significant pledges to reduce their environmental footprint and help address important social issues.
Our Team
Our Approach
How We Can Help
The team can assist clients with every step along the sustainability and ESG journey. Our support includes the following:
- Developing strategic priorities, policies, practices, and procedures.
- Identifying priority issues for businesses.
- Creating frameworks to assess sustainability program implementation and measure progress.
- Advising on regulatory compliance and helping to anticipate and prepare for regulatory changes.
- Establishing sustainability programs and assisting with sustainability reviews and ESG ratings processes.
- Developing compliance policies and procedures.
- Conducting compliance audits/gap analysis.
- Developing compliance policies for marketing practices.
- Preparing for and advising on SEC and other investor-facing disclosures.
- Preparing for SEC examinations.
- Advising on green bond and sustainability bond offerings.
- Managing ESG fund formation.
- Managing supply chain compliance.
- Advising on anti-corruption and anti-fraud.
- Counseling on industry- or sector-specific ESG topics.
- Advising on business continuity and incident and crisis response.
- Defending against claims of misconduct or enforcement actions.
- Litigating ESG-related claims.
- Counseling on and analyzing human capital/employee satisfaction.
Practice Tips
Establishing best practices is a key component of managing risk. We strategically guide clients through this process, including:
- Preparing investor-facing sustainability disclosures and marketing materials with internal controls and diligence that coordinate with reporting on financial results, avoiding “greenwashing” at all costs.
- Conducting an assessment to identify risks and understand current alignment with core business values, disclosures, industry standards, and regulatory requirements, both existing and anticipated.
- Prioritizing a subset of issues specific to each company, with an eye toward matching internal goals and increasing value for the company.
- Determining, based on core values, industry standards, and regulatory requirements, whether the company is prepared to publicly commit to specific climate or sustainability targets.
- Monitoring, measuring, and reporting on progress.
- Staying current on regulatory and practice developments through such resources as Perkins Coie blogs, Public Chatter and the Asset Management ADVocate.
Public Chatter
Asset Management ADVocate
Awards and Recognition
- Named “Environment Law Firm of the Year” by Chambers USA, 2023
