Lawyers in a Warming World

Climate change is the great disrupter of humanity, and the Canadian legal profession is at an inflection point. This article begins by briefly outlining the self-governing legal profession’s duties in Canada to uphold and protect the public interest in the administration of justice, including ensuring competencies. It then chronicles, and engages in a comparative analysis of, climate change-related resolutions and actions taken across 15 legal bars, societies, and associations around the world and situates those actions to current measures in Canada. In addressing some of the barriers found within self-regulatory bodies and voluntary associations for Canadian lawyers, the article then provides a basic primer for lawyers to understand the growing significance of climate change impacts on legal systems and civilizations and its potential to undermine legal rights. It identifies further areas of research that are needed regarding legal competencies in understanding climate-related risks and opportunities in relation to lawyers’ duty of care to their clients in Canada. Rapid developments in the law and evolving risk registers in response to a warming world are creating new understandings of what constitutes climate competent lawyering. This article lays the groundwork for further work in climate-related actions for the Canadian legal profession.