Carbon Tools Launched for Law Firms, Employee Engagement

Law firm consultancy ecoAnalyze has released ED3 Lite, a free online tool for law firms to calculate their carbon footprints.

Firms can use ED3 Lite to estimate their footprints in areas such as energy usage, waste, business travel and – perhaps most importantly for law firms, ecoAnalyze says – paper. The application is a scaled-down version of ecoAnalyze’s ED3 Pro environmental management system, which the company says is the only carbon measurement and management tool designed with the specific business model, operations and needs of a law firm in mind.

ED3 Lite was first released to the Law Firm Sustainability Network, a group of law firm sustainability professionals administered by ecoAnalyze.? The network includes representatives from Alston & Bird; Bryan Cave; Crowell Moring; Cravath; Kilpatrick Townsend; Kirkland & Ellis; Latham & Watkins; Morgan Lewis; Morrison Foerster; Nixon Peabody; Paul Hastings; Pillsbury Winthrop; Proskauer; Rimon; Seyfarth Shaw; Shearman & Sterling; Vinson & Elkins; and Wendel Rosen.

Representatives from these firms meet monthly to share best practices for law firm sustainability.

In other software news, the Carbon Trust has launched Empower, an online tool designed to help employees make energy savings.

The tool – whose name is a contraction of Employee Power – includes tutorials, virtual tours, a quiz, and other interactive elements designed to raise staff’s awareness of carbon and cost-saving opportunities, and encourage them to play their part.

Tools for managers include an online calculator that indicates the potential cost savings organizations could achieve by implementing the measures contained in Empower.