The UNGPs are relevant for firms in multiple respects.
Capacity building
Advising clients on business human rights issues offers a major business opportunity for law firms. To capitalize on this opportunity, firms need to ensure they build capacity to advise on these issues, and this requires both developing specialist human rights expertise; and also ensuring that lawyers in all practice areas have access to resources to help them understand human rights issues that are relevant to their practice.
Value chain considerations
Firms form part of their clients’ value chains, and are being increasingly asked to demonstrate that they respect human rights and can identify and address the human rights risks that may be linked to their legal services, in order to comply with clients’ human rights due diligence policies and processes.
Law firms have a responsibility to respect human rights under the UNGPs
Secondly, law firms as businesses have their own responsibility to respect human rights under the UNGPs, and this has important implications for firms’ operations and approaches to client engagement.
Fims risk enabling human rights abuses by their clients in various ways, for example, through facilitating SLAPPs (Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation) or establishment of shell corporations that enable beneficial owners to hide their involvement in human rights abuses. While such conduct may be lawful in some jurisdictions, the UNGPs require firms to seek ways to honour human rights where there are conflicts between national laws and international human rights standards, and to treat risks of contributing to human rights abuses as a legal compliance issue (UNGP 23(b) and (c)).
As a result, law firms should assess their relationships with clients (both at the beginning of and throughout each client relationship) to determine whether their legal services could contribute to human rights abuses, and respond accordingly. This might mean choosing not to enter into, or ending, relationships with some clients. Helpful questions for firms to ask include:
In all contexts, business enterprises should:
(a) Comply with all applicable laws and respect internationally recognized human rights, wherever they operate;
(b) Seek ways to honour the principles of internationally recognized human rights when faced with conflicting requirements;
(c) Treat the risk of causing or contributing to gross human rights abuses as a legal compliance issue wherever they operate.
- UNGP 23.
(a) Will the services and advice it renders likely cause or contribute to human rights abuse by the client in its operations or in its value chain?
(b) Who are the stakeholders who will be affected?
(c) What is the severity of the harm from the perspective of the stakeholder?
(d) What is the likelihood of potential impacts based on the context of the client’s operations, value chain, management system and business model?
(e) What is the connection between the nature of the lawyer’s advice and services and the likely harm (i.e., will the advice or services cause, contribute, or merely be linked to the harm), and similarly, what is the connection between the client’s conduct and the likely harm?
(f) What steps can the firm reasonably take to prevent or mitigate such harm?
(g) Is the likely harm so egregious and persistent that the firm should consider not undertaking the representation?
