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THE ENVIRONMENTAL CHALLENGES of today require business to play an active role. Finding sustainable solutions to these increasingly difficulty challenges calls for young professionals with training, business acumen, and legal know-how. Recognizing the need for a new cohort of legal professionals, Haub Law has launched the Sustainable Business Law Hub to train lawyers in sustainable business practices.
“Haub Law continues to successfully train lawyers of the future, and our newly launched Sustainable Business Law Hub now trains the first generation of sustainable business lawyers,” said Haub Law Dean Horace Anderson.
Haub Law’s Sustainable Business Law Hub is more than just an educational venture to empower graduate lawyers with a mind for sustainable business practices; it also helps employ those practices in real-time, benefiting the social spectrum of businesses and the environment. Serving as an incubator space, a research endeavor, and think tank devoted to addressing local and global sustainability challenges through policy and research projects, relationships with the business community, and capacity building in private environmental governance, the Hub program is a prime opportunity for Haub Law to meaningfully contribute to the enhancement of good corporate citizenship.
The Sustainable Business Law Hub functions as a competitive program, with Haub Law students applying for acceptance and taking prerequisite courses. The rigorous curriculum, with seminars related to environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG), and sustainable development, is complemented with opportunities for practical experience through externships and a practicum. Within those settings, the students work in an in-house sustainability or legal department, handling environmental compliance issues, ESG, and assisting with sustainability strategies and policies.
Sam Perlmutter, Class of 2023, served as an intern with Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP as part of the Haub Law Sustainable Business
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Law Hub, working with the firm’s Sustainability and Environmental, Social & Governance (ESG) Advisory Practice. She said the experience provided her with very useful practical training in applying the law to promote sustainable business practices in the private sector.
“As an ESG intern, I worked with the team and helped conduct a human rights impact assessment for a USbased, information communications technology company. I also researched and built out a playbook for the ESG team to use on the intersection of current-day, pressing ESG and executive compensation concerns,” she said.
“Additionally, I helped the ESG team address the myriad questions from clients regarding the recently proposed SEC rule on climate change disclosures, including comments on the rule and GHG emissions reporting concerns. I am grateful for the opportunity to work towards a new standard of corporate responsibility that includes a focus on economic, social and environmental welfare,” Perlmutter said.
Bailey Andree, Class of 2023, who also interned with Paul, Weiss, said it was an “incredible experience” to work with people so knowledgeable in ESG. It also taught her that there’s a lot to lawyering that happens outside the courtroom. “This has certainly given me a more defined
“This Hub is another example of our environmental law program taking things to the next level to help solve reallife environmental concerns and issues.” Professor Jason J. Czarnezki picture of what an ESG attorney does. When I entered law school, I barely had an idea of what an attorney did: I thought I was entering a field with non-stop courtroom time! Thankfully (for me, at least), that is not the case. My time with Paul, Weiss, has shown me that I can conduct research and write reports on areas that interest me, focusing more on the behind-the-scenes practices behind a typical law practice. I am excited that my future could look like this and grateful to have the opportunity to experience it in law school,” said Andree, Class of 2023. She continued, “It has been “Through my internship at Paul Weiss with the an incredible Sustainable Business Law Hub, I am working with experience to be their ESG & Sustainability Advisory Practice. I am able to work with primarily researching ESG practices of specific compeople that are panies and evaluating them for Paul, Weiss. I have had the opportunity to attend a so knowledgeable climate governance webinar, write a brief report on the in ESG!” Bailey Andree, Class of 2023 webinar, research the SEC’s
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