Law Students for Climate Accountability releases report on elite law school fossil fuel lawyering recruitment
The Law Students for Climate Accountability (LSCA) has released a new report documenting the role of the elite "T20" law schools in the fossil fuel lawyering recruitment pipeline. According to co-founding member and Switzer Fellow Camila Bustos, the report team created a database of more than 3300 fossil fuel lawyers, including where they went to law school. The results revealed a startling pattern: the elite schools are sending lawyers into careers like oil and gas law at a rate that is over three times the average.
The report has gotten coverage in E&E News, Above the Law, Reuters, Inside Higher Ed, Desmog, JDJournal, and Jurist.
The report’s findings “emphasize that prestige in the legal field, including the view promoted by the US News rankings, is far too often accorded to actors advancing injustice. The same law schools that sit at the top of the US News rankings serve as linchpins in the production of lawyers who help climate polluters avoid accountability, write the contracts for climate-destroying fossil fuel projects, and lobby against environmental regulations.”
The T20 schools that have produced the most fossil fuel lawyers are: (1) The University of Texas Law School, (2) University of Virginia School of Law, (3) Yale Law School, (4) Harvard Law School, and (5) Vanderbilt University Law School. Visit the report for the full list.
The authors argue that “law schools shape the decisions their students make, and they seem to acknowledge this point: law schools proudly claim the successes of their graduates. They should also face scrutiny for the injustices their graduates advance. Indeed, the work their graduates go on to perform constitutes the most influential effect law schools have on the climate crisis.”
