October 2025 Newsletter

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by

Legal Voices for the Future
in

Dear Members

Welcome to LVF’s October newsletter!

As the season shifts from summer to autumn we encourage our members to be reflective and consider what they can do to bring about positive change. In this edition we share part one of our overview of Legal Careers for a Sustainable Future, where we consider careers for a positive and sustainable future and how we can use our skills for change!

This edition of Legal Voices for the Future’s the newsletter includes: 

  • Look back at our September KS
  • Our upcoming LVF Education and LVF Community events 
  • Legal Careers for a Sustainable Future: Part One

See you next month,

September knowledge session

Our first Knowledge Session following our summer break explored the role of NGOs in driving climate laws. If you missed it you can catch the recording on Youtube.

The session started with session lead Dominika (LVF’s Deputy Chair and Legal Officer at Opportunity Green) giving a brief introduction to NGOs and how they function, explaining the importance of having a strong and unique theory of change (a roadmap which details exactly how a project intends to achieve its desired outcomes), and the pressures of seeking funding. 

Our panel then delved into a detailed discussion on the diverse array of legal tools available to lawyers at NGOs wanting to make a meaningful change:

  • Sophie Marjanac (Director of Legal Strategy at Polluter Pays Project) spoke about using legal and soft-law levers (including UN Special Procedures) to force oil and gas decommissioning costs back onto industry.
  • Ricardo Gama (Partner in the human rights and public law department of Leigh Day) shared his experience of using judicial review as an accountability engine that can surface facts and shift policy even in the face of adverse judgments.
  • Guillermo Miranda García (Senior Associate at The Chancery Lane Project) introduced us to the concept of ‘climate-conscious lawyering’ that hard-wires sustainability into everyday client advice, such as M&A deals.
  • David Kay (Legal Director at Opportunity Green) mentioned targeted legal interventions, such as ASA greenwashing rulings, that hit the biggest outcome with the smallest lever.

Insights were shared about the importance of effective comms strategies, collaboration between different legal professionals, the often-overlooked issue of enforcement, the ways in which judgments, rulings and decisions can shift public opinion, behaviour and even investor risk, and the limits on what the law can actually achieve. 

The panel also shared some words of wisdom for aspiring NGO lawyers: don’t self-select out – just apply when you see a good opportunity; develop your skills no matter where you are now – they will come in handy later on in your career, sometimes in unexpected ways; climate-literate lawyers are needed across the board: in private practice, in-house, at NGOs, in academia, etc. 

The creative content, Rory Pilgrim’s interactive exhibition ‘pink & green’ generated interesting discussions about the role of the law in building a better world, which we carried through to the pub! Thanks to all who attended. 

Poll for LVF members: who do you look up to?

We are curious to learn: who do lawyers consider authoritative and look up to as thought leaders? Who are the role models for the legal community in 2025?

We are running a LinkedIn poll asking these questions for the next week, and we would really appreciate your vote and an accompanying comment below indicating who specifically you have in mind. Access the poll and vote here.

Upcoming events

LVF Education

  • October Members’ Webinar: Stewardship Committee member Hadrien Espiard will be hosting a webinar in collaboration with a research centre to better understand how biodiversity and conservation policies manifest on the ground. This will be taking place at 12:30-1:30 pm (BST), and you can sign up here.
  • November Knowledge Session: our first November knowledge session, ‘Investor-State Arbitration and Climate Challenges’ will take place on 5 November 2025 at 6.30pm (GMT), in person at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change & the Environment and online. The speakers will be discussing the investor-state dispute settlement and how States’ obligations under investor treaties may conflict with State obligations on climate change, and we have amazing panellists joining us:Judy Fu (barrister at 3VB), Lucia Bizikova (Associate at WilmerHale) and Dr Oliver Hailes (Assistant Professor at the LSE Law School). Find out more and sign up for online or in person tickets here.
  • November UKELA South West & LVF joint Knowledge Session: we are delighted to be hosting a joint event on 20 November 2025 with UKELA (in person in Bristol and online) on environmental permitting, which will explore whether the regime in England and Wales is ready for the changes that will be needed in the next 30 years. We have fantastic speakers lined up for the event: Lord Charles Banner KC (at Keating Chambers), Marcus Reynolds (Senior Managing Consultant at Ramboll) and Jo Pope (Permit Assurance Manager at Pennon Group Plc). The event will take place, at Burges Salmon’s Bristol office and online. Sign up here!

Details of our events are in the table 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.

LVF Community

  • Poetry evening: we will be hosting our first ever poetry reading evening soon! We will circulate details in due course.

Other Events

  • September and October 2025: Check out ‘The Line We Crossed’, a documentary by Liz Smith, featuring climate protestors facing a restrained right to protest despite their nonviolent civil resistance. There are screenings in London for September and October 2025, and across the UK, find out more here. In December 2025, we expect to hold a knowledge session on climate change activism in the UK, so watching this film will be a helpful precursor to that session!
  • Wednesday, 22 October  2025, 1-2.30pm online, ‘The ICJ Ruling: Implications for Private’: An event hosted by Legal Charter 1.5 exploring how the ICJ Ruling is reshaping the legal landscape. Sign up here.
  • Thursday, 23 October 2025, 7-9pm, in person – ‘Voices for Change: Stories from the Environmental Movement’: Hosted by the British Library, this event celebrates environmental activism through personal stories and interviews with movement leaders. Sign up here.
  • Thursday, 23 October 2025, 6-7.30pm (BST), online and in person – ‘Ask the Experts: Global Climate Equality – Is a Fair Future Possible?’: Join leading voices in climate justice for a dynamic discussion hosted by Climate Action and the British Council. This event explores how climate change intersects with global inequality and what can be done to ensure a just transition. Sign up here.
  • Monday, 27 October 2025, TBC, in person in London – ‘International Protection in the Context of the Climate Crisis: Legal Strategies for UK Practice and Policy’: express your interest here.
  • Monday, 17 November 2025, in person in London – ‘Film-screening & roundtable discussion: Global Day of Action for Climate Justice: Decarbonization – A just transition?’. Sign up here.
  • Ongoing open daily, in person – Visions of Nature: A mixed reality experience at the Natural History Museum. An interactive exhibition using mixed reality glasses to show how the planet may look like 100 years from now. Book your tickets here.
  • Ongoing until 4 January 2026 at the Science Museum – Future of Food Exhibition. An interactive, multi-sensory exhibition exploring how our food today goes from field to plate and how will advances in ecology and biotechnology change food in the future. Tickets are free, book here.
  • On demand: catch up with the launch of Pete Bett’s book ‘The Climate Diplomat‘, hosted by our partner the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and Environment.

If you go to any of these events – let us know! We’d love to hear your experience and share it with other Legal Voices members on our Linkedin Community Group and website.

Legal Careers for a Sustainable Future – Saturday 11 October 2025

Please note that we will be sharing career tips from our speakers and longer summaries of their sessions in a newsletter exclusively covering this event! Watch this space!

We hosted our first-ever careers event, in collaboration with the Centre for Climate Law & Governance at King’s College London, Legal Careers for a Sustainable Future on Saturday 11 October 2025.

Legal Careers for a Sustainable Future was not your traditional careers event, we carefully curated sessions with speakers across the legal sector aimed to foster collaboration, creativity and hope. We were massively oversubscribed and we’re super grateful to everyone who took the time to apply.

We had 68 attendees taking part in four workshops, each run by: Emily Bradeen (Grantham Research Institute), Andrew Nealon (Vinson & Elkins), Dr Clara Lopez (Kings College London), Phoebe Tickell (Moral Imaginations), Jake White (WWF), Monica Feria-Tinta (Twenty Essex Chambers), Zaneta Sedilekova (Planetary Law Lab), Joshua Domb (Gen-R Law) and Apolline Roger (Client Earth). 

Our workshops focused on different skills that will be valuable for careers for a sustainable future, including presenting skills, empathy, negotiating and many more. 

We closed the day with fantastic networking drinks sponsored by Kings College London and Gen-R Law giving all of our speakers, guests and committee members a chance to socialise and reflect on the day. 

We are so grateful to all of our speakers, to Kings College London’s Centre for Climate Law and Governance, Gen-R Law, and all of our attendees for making our first Legal Careers for a Sustainable Future such a fantastic day, we could not have achieved this event without all of your contributions. 

If you attended the event, would be really grateful for any feedback. If you have any feedback to share please email us at legalvoicesforthefuture@gmail.com. 

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