April 21, 2023

 Tom ‘Hersh’ Hershenson

data hygiene legal operations earth day work from home tech roi

With Earth Day upon us, here’s a question: can legal ops save the planet? An odd question, perhaps – what does legal ops have to do with the environment? – but the activities of law organisations inevitably impact carbon generation from electricity use, commuting, and other sources. Several Elevate Experts’ recent blog posts examined aspects of legal ops with significant potential to lower carbon emissions:

Handling Data Wisely. In October, Megan Silverman detailed how a ‘data diet’ – a concerted effort to minimise the data an organisation collects and retains – directly impacts carbon emissions from cloud storage facilities. Since, according to one estimate, companies never access (let alone use) upwards of 80% of the data they store, most law organisations have plenty of potential for environmental benefits from an improved data storage strategy. Megan provided five tips related to auto-deletion of data, organisational improvements, replacing cloud storage with local hard drives, better data hygiene, and (other than when legal hold requirements dictate otherwise) discarding unnecessary data.

Becoming ‘Location Agnostic’. In a February post, Sharath Beedu explored how the location of work affects law departments. Corporate leaders have focused on the productivity impact of different types of return-to-office policies, but the environmental costs of commuting and office use (e.g., electricity, HVAC systems, furniture, supplies, etc.) are sizeable. Companies adopting a hybrid approach to staff location risk lower productivity from information and materials ending up scattered everywhere employees work. By streamlining and standardising legal processes, law organisations can mitigate that risk and reduce the need for employees to come into the office. In addition to the environmental gains, a law organisation can also achieve cost savings and improve operational efficiency.

Reducing Leakage in Tech Investments. Because carbon emissions correspond to technology use and reduced emissions are possible when technology-optimised processes improve productivity, there is an environmental payoff for getting greater value out of technology. In March, Kim Lanza-Russo discussed seven tips for maximising the return on legal technology, expanding on an earlier post on three critical steps for limiting technology investment leakage: documenting and optimising the legal process at issue, investigating technology options (including software you already have deployed), and assessing ROI.

These Expert pieces highlight how non-optimised law processes generate unnecessary environmental impacts. That insight provides an answer to the question posed at the beginning of this article: legal ops may not save the planet, but collectively, legal ops professionals can make an important difference.