ESG

Corporate Sustainability

Sustainability isn’t just on the social and governmental agenda, it’s also on the corporate agenda. ESG (Environment, Social and Governance) provides a legal and commercial framework for measuring the sustainability and ethical impact of a company’s operations and its officers’ actions, and in some cases compliance with ESG standards is mandatory. Sustainability is already a long-established and important element of corporate identity, and many companies have internal guidance and regulations in place as a framework for making sustainability part of the organisation’s DNA.

We understand ESG as a comprehensive and cross-practice group issue, and we believe that a holistic approach is essential to the success of any ESG strategy. Ecological and social factors in combination with sustainable and responsible corporate governance are integral to numerous divisions and departments, and our employees make an essential contribution to ESG compliance. An ESG framework with a thematic focus has emerged since ESG first appeared on the radar and then became established in the corporate sector. It extends from climate change and environmental protection to labour conditions and supply chains, diversity and inclusion, corruption and bribery-related issues, whistleblowing and sustainable and responsible governance.

Our ESG competence team members are lawyers from various practice groups with extensive experience in their respective fields of law. In our holistic ESG consultancy activities we benefit from their expert knowledge, and they support our corporate clients in connection with ecological, social and governance-related issues – both on a voluntary undertaking basis and a legally codified basis.

Our consultancy services

Environment
Climate change and environmental protection

  • Corporate compliance with EHS requirements
  • Support in complex planning and approval procedures
  • Identification and assessment of environmental risks in M&A transactions
  • Liability risks in connection with environmental projects
  • Cooperation between companies in environmental protection – antitrust aspects
  • Advice on green buildings and green leases
  • Forward-looking development of energy supply and generation concepts
  • Management of complex energy law implications in transactions
  • ESG-compatible investments in the energy sector
  • Consideration of climate protection-related requirements in business operations and transactions
  • Realisation of installations in connection with the transition to renewables
  • Renewables, transactions and regulation
  • Future mobility, e-mobility and the charging infrastructure
  • Liability risks in connection with climate change
  • ESG and climate protection actions
  • Advertising with environmental claims
  • Liability risks in connection with greenwashing
  • Environmental product legislation

Social
Employment conditions and supply chains

  • Drafting of human rights policies
  • Diversity and inclusion
  • Occupational health and safety
  • Company pension schemes
  • Fair working conditions
  • German Act on Corporate Due Diligence Obligations in Supply Chains, supply chain risk analysis and development
  • Roll-out/implementation of risk management systems
  • Drafting of supplier codes of conduct and clauses
  • Development of complaint and redress mechanisms

Governance & risk
Sustainable and responsible corporate governance

  • Corporate governance structures
  • Sustainable executive board and management remuneration as well as ESG criteria in the remuneration systems (incl. regulatory requirements)
  • ESG reporting and disclosure obligations (Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive, CSRD)
  • Codes of conduct
  • ESG readiness systems
  • Sustainability reporting
  • Crisis management advice
  • D&O liability
  • Administrative, judicial and extrajudicial disputes at national and international level
  • Compliance and risk management
  • ESG due diligence and ESG transaction documentation
  • Antitrust law
  • Diversity in management and supervisory bodies
  • Implementation of whistleblowing systems
  • Advice on and preparation for internal investigations