Happy New Year Members!
We hope you all had a lovely festive period, and got a well-deserved rest. We are really looking forward to what 2025 has in store for Legal Voices and can’t wait to continue educating junior lawyers on the climate and ecological crises, and connecting with peers in the LVF community. Our first newsletter of the year includes:
- LVF’s new Stewardship Committee chairs/members
- Our survey requesting your input to help shape LVF’s future (we would really appreciate you taking the time to respond – it will only take 10 minutes!)
- Details of upcoming events
- LVF’s reading list for 2025
We are delighted to announce LVF’s Stewardship Committee for 2025!
After being at the helm of LVF for the past year, our Chair, Ming Zee Tee, and Deputy Chairs, Flora Curtis and Sarah Hill-Smith, are stepping down. We would like to take this opportunity to thank them for their hard work and inspiring leadership, and wish them all the very best in their future endeavours.
The Stewardship Committee has also selected this year’s Chair team. Existing Committee members Emma Short and Harriet Hall are now Co-Chairs, and Dominika Leitane is the new Deputy Chair. Though they have big shoes to fill, they are excited to get started.
Existing Committee members Catríona Campbell, Marina Soares, Riley Forson and Yomna Elewa are staying on for another term. They have done fantastic work for LVF, and we are thrilled to have them on board for another year. The Stewardship Committee is expanding! In 2025, we will have 5 new Committee members: Carol Yuen, Hadrien Espiard, Olivia Lunn, Orla Heatley and Verity Thomson. We are confident that they will make amazing additions to the Committee, and we are happy to welcome them to the team!
Member survey
We would be very grateful if you could spare c.10 minutes to complete our LVF member survey, so that LVF can continue to deliver great things and meet your expectations in 2025! This is a fantastic opportunity for our members to give feedback on the practical delivery of our events but also to share ideas on the ‘bigger picture’ of LVF! Your input is incredibly valuable to us, and will help shape the future of LVF, so we’d like to say a big thank you in advance for your feedback and time! Access the survey here.
Upcoming LVF events
- Our first event of the year takes place on Wednesday, 22 January at 12.30-1.30pm (GMT), a webinar led by incoming LVF Stewardship Committee member Orla Heatley on ‘Who May Speak for Nature in Court? Standing and Representation Issues in Climate Litigation’. More detail and registration is available here.
- LVF is turning two this month! Join us in-person for our anniversary event from 6pm GMT on Wednesday 29 January. The event will take place at the Arch House by Anspach & Hobday, an independent London-based brewery, on the famous Bermondsey Beer Mile (118 Druid St, London SE1 2HH). Please register your interest here, just so we can keep track of numbers.
- Our first knowledge session of 2025 will take place on Wednesday, 5 February at 6.30-8.30pm (GMT), online and in person at Herbert Smith Freehills, London. It will be led by LVF member Klara Lee, and focus on AI, Environment & the Law. More information and registration for online and in-person attendance here.
- LVF is launching a webinar series on the energy transition. Join us for the first webinar in the series on Tuesday 11 March at 12-1pm GMT, led by Maxine and Victoria from the legal team at E.ON. Look out for a LinkedIn poll – we want to hear from you, the LVF community, to find out what interests you most about the energy transition. The registration link will be shared soon.
Details of our other knowledge sessions are below, and you can also always find more about our upcoming events on our website and Ticketsource page, and details of our past events on our website.
Other upcoming events
Here are some upcoming events hosted by others which may be of interest to members:
- 22 January, 10-11am: Our partner, the Grantham Research Institute (GRI), is hosting a webinar on implementing the KlimaSeniorinnen judgment. Details and registration available here.
- 22 January: UCL Laws and UKELA are hosting a hybrid event on UK Environmental Law: ‘Taking Stock and Looking To The Future’. Details and registration available here
- 6 February, 7:15-8:15pm: UCL is hosting ‘Strasbourg and Climate Change: Taking Stock’ with Judge Tim Eicke, the UK’s judge to the European Court of Human Rights. Details and registration available here.
- 13 February: Dickson Poon School of Law at King’s College London with Net Zero Lawyers Alliance – ‘The Future of Legal Practice: Net Zero and the Climate Imperative’. Details and registration available here.
- 18 February: ‘The Law as lever for a net zero nature positive future’ with 39 Essex Chambers. Details and registration available here.
24 February, 6-7.30pm: UKELA is hosting ‘Trends in climate litigation’ online and in London. Details available here (note there is a charge for joining).
QMUL’s new Law and Climate Justice LLB
QMUL have recently launched a new LLB programme in Law and Climate Justice. This will qualify graduates to practise law in any field while also developing a specialism in climate justice, with the opportunity for a placement with an NGO. Find out more details here. As well as this, QMUL have recently launched a podcast episode and accompanying blog piece introducing the programme, exploring its vision and the critical need for lawyers to engage with questions of justice in the face of climate breakdown.
LVF’s 2025 reading list
We know many of you will want to be reading more this year, and books are a great way to engage with the planetary crisis. We have included a selection of those which we learnt a lot from, which have inspired us, or which we are hoping to read this year.
‘Islands of Abandonment’ by Cal Flyn: Cal Flyn writes about nature thriving in places which have been abandoned by humans – such as ‘West Lothian’s sleeping giants’, pictured above from an article in The Guardian, which are massive slag heaps with at least 350 different species, some of them very rare – and what this means for adaptation and reparation.
‘Wilding’ by Isabella Tree: Isabella Tree set up the Knepp Estate rewilding project with her husband Charlie Burrell, and this book describes the beginning of their journey. Molly Biddell, Head of Natural Capital at Knepp Estate, was a panellist at our December 2024 knowledge session on BNG and nature recovery (the recording of the session is available here).
‘This Changes Everything’ by Naomi Klein: This has been around for a while but is still very relevant in addressing the interplay between capitalism and climate change.
‘Orbital’ by Samantha Harvey: This novella, which won the 2024 Booker Prize, is from the viewpoint of astronauts looking down on Earth and brings out a completely different perspective on the planet.
‘The Value of a Whale’ by Adienne Buller: The book examines what is wrong with mainstream climate and environmental governance, from carbon pricing and offset markets to ‘green growth’, the commodification of nature and the growing influence of the finance industry on environmental policy.
‘The Future We Choose’ by Christina Figueres and Tom Rivett-Carnac: The book outlines three key areas. First, what is at stake over the next decade and what kind of future we will face, depending on which path we choose. Secondly, how we can all adapt our attitudes to help us play a more optimistic, positive role in this great transformation. Finally, the practical steps we can all enact to ensure we participate in this change.
‘When I Sing, Mountains Dance’ by Irene Solà: This is the story of a place in the Pyrenees, told from the perspectives of its many habitants – human, animal, fungal, mineral… It is a magical exploration of the interconnectedness of nature.
Legal Voices for the Future 
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