IBA Nature-Intelligent Legal Services series
Nature as a new frontier of risk and opportunity for lawyers and law firms:
introducing the Nature-Intelligent Legal Services series
A guide for lawyers and law firms to understand nature-related risks, and add client value through embedding nature into legal services.
Nature and biodiversity loss pose fundamental challenges to people, societies, organisations and financial institutions around the globe. However, while the relevance of climate-related risks and opportunities to legal practice is a matter of common discussion, understanding of nature-related risks (what they are, and how they relate to legal services) remains reasonably limited among lawyers and law firms.
This ambitious project, titled the ‘Nature Intelligent Legal Services series’, changes that. Originally designed and co-authored by corporate and nature lawyer Jenni Ramos, and developed with the IBA Environment, Health and Safety Law Committee and the IBA Law Firm Management ESG Subcommittee with support from the IBA Legal Policy & Research Unit (LPRU), the series has received input from biodiversity law experts and other IBA committees, with sectoral nature exposure methodology devised by sustainability consultancy Nature Positive.
All businesses, including law firms, depend on services provided by nature as sources of value, either directly or through their supply chains. Meanwhile, we know that many business activities are adversely impacting nature, for example through contributing to climate change, pollution or over-exploitation of ecosystems. These impacts and dependencies on nature create risks for organisations and their value chains. We are proud to have worked with experts to develop a first of its kind and user-friendly toolkit that helps lawyers from every practice area to consider what nature-related risks mean for their clients, and to embed solutions into their client services
Wangui Kaniaru
Co-Chair, IBA Law Firm Management Committee ESG Subcommittee / Member, IBA Nature-Intelligent Legal Services series Working Group / Consultant
Els Reynaers
Co-Chair, IBA Environment, Health & Safety Committee / Member, IBA Nature-Intelligent Legal Services series Working Group / Head, Environmental Law, MV Kini Law Firm
The Nature-Intelligent Legal Services series
The series is made up of three parts:
- Legal Nature Risk and Opportunity: A Business Case Guide – Why legal service providers should act: examining nature-related risks, opportunities and strategic benefits for lawyers and law firms.
- Nature-Intelligent Legal Services Toolkit – How to assess: a practical tool for law firms to evaluate client nature exposures and develop strategic positioning. The sectoral nature exposure methodology that underlies this Toolkit was devised by Nature Positive.
- Nature-Intelligent Legal Advisory and Clause Guide – How to implement: a guide to embedding nature into legal advice and contracts.
See further detail about the series below.
Through my legal career advising clients across sectors including infrastructure, real estate and agribusiness, and as Chair of the IBA Water Law Committee, I have seen how extreme heat and drought are impacting water supply and consumption across industries and regions. I am delighted to have contributed to the IBA Nature-Intelligent Legal Services series, which includes practical guidance for lawyers address water scarcity concerns using contract clauses that incentivise water efficiency, water recycling and local watershed protection initiatives
Kleber Zanchim
Chair, IBA Water Law Committee / Partner, SABZ Advogados
Who can use this series?
The series is designed for lawyers and law firm leaders and business development teams: whatever your practice area or your law firm’s size or resources, this series is for you.
How can I be involved?
As the first of its kind for the legal sector, the Nature-Intelligent Legal Services Toolkit is designed for ongoing iteration and development. Its Creative Commons licence enables law firms and other professional service sectors to adapt it to their own contexts.
If you are interested in championing the use of the toolkit in your law firm and letting us know of your experiences, please contact us by emailing
LPRU@int-bar.org. Feedback about the Toolkit and the series is also welcome, to help improve future versions (eg, has it improved your understanding of nature-related risks and their relevance to legal services? Have you been able to practically apply it in your everyday work? What would you change about it?). Please contact LPRU@int-bar.org to share your feedback and suggestions.
Throughout my career as a banking and finance lawyer, and through my work advising clients in relation to ESG matters, I have seen growing efforts by financial institutions to integrate nature-related risks into governance and decision-making processes. Today, we are seeing commercial banks assess their portfolio dependencies on nature; embed biodiversity risks into lending decisions; and begin to align their portfolios to priorities such as halting deforestation; minimising water pollution; and restoring degraded ecosystems. We’re also seeing investors ask more questions of investee companies about their approaches to governing nature risks.
I am delighted that the IBA Banking & Financial Law Committee contributed to the IBA Nature-Intelligent Legal Services series. I applaud the series’ inclusion of practical examples that lawyers can use to support banking clients to address their nature-related risks in their portfolios, through measures such as sustainability-linked loans and introducing nature risk disclosure requirements into lending agreements
Emmanuelle Mousel
Vice Chair, IBA Banking & Financial Law Committee’s Banking Regulation Subcommittee / Partner and ESG Specialist, Arendt & Medernach
All businesses, including law firms, are highly dependent on services provided by nature as sources of value, either directly or through their supply chains. Meanwhile, many business activities are adversely impacting nature, for example through changing land and sea use, contributing to the climate crisis, creating air, land and water pollution or over-exploiting ecosystems. These impacts and dependencies on nature are resulting in risks for organisations and their value chains, and these risks are manifesting as material financial impacts and legal risks.
Law firms who take a proactive approach to understanding clients’ nature-related risk exposures are well-positioned to provide the necessary technical and strategic advice to support clients to respond to such risks and harness related opportunities. This can create opportunities for firms to bring in new types of clients, matters and markets, develop client loyalty, attract and retain talent and mitigate risks.
The Business Case Guide sets out the clear business case for lawyers and law firms to take their clients’ nature risk exposures seriously, both as a way to create business development opportunities and to mitigate risks that law firms themselves might face.
Download the Business Case Guide
The Toolkit provides legal service providers (LSPs) with a methodology to understand their clients’ nature-related exposures and how best to use this data to enhance their legal services. It is designed for use by law firm leadership, business development teams, risk and compliance teams and lawyers, and comprises three stages:
- Stage 1: client assessment – the Toolkit includes an easy Tool for client onboarding teams to assess a client’s exposure to nature risks based on their sector, and their stage of nature governance.
- Stage 2: strategic portfolio analysis – the Toolkit sets out guidance for law firm strategy and business development teams to use data from stage one to understand their firm’s market position and opportunities to grow nature advisory services.
- Stage 3: Nature value added services – the final part of the Toolkit sets out tips for legal professionals to use their understanding of a client’s nature exposures to add value for clients and the firm itself, using the Nature-Intelligent Advisory and Clause Guide that makes up the final part of the series.
Keep in mind:
- start small – the Toolkit includes guidance to ensure firms can use all or part of the tool, depending on size and resources; and
- a business development and strategy tool – the Toolkit is designed to provide a business development, risk mitigation and strategy resource that will assist firms in providing value to their clients and with attracting and maintaining talent. It is not a compliance tool, disclosure framework or third-party assurance tool and there is no expectation that LSPs will refuse clients based on Toolkit findings.
For full technical details on how the sectoral indicators underlying the Toolkit were derived, please see the accompanying Technical Appendix: Sectoral Nature Indicators Scoring Methodology.
Download the Toolkit
The final part of the series provides a handy guide for lawyers to use their knowledge of a client’s nature-related risk exposure to add value through legal advice, offering a range of mechanisms through which this might be done depending on the client and their particular legal needs.
The Guide does not seek to cover the field in terms of all of the ways in which nature may arise in the context of legal advice, but is designed to give concrete ideas and examples to help get legal teams thinking about opportunities to add value.
It features clause templates to provide a starting point for lawyers to integrate nature into a range of different contract types, from procurement contracts to financial agreements, construction contracts, employment agreements and more.
Illustrative case studies show how legal advice and contracts can help clients address a range of nature-related risks and opportunities across sectors, including agricultural products, finance, energy, mining, textiles, real estate and more.
Download the Clause Guide