UK legal charity The Chancery Lane Project (TCLP) has created an open-source AI tool that enables lawyers to copy and paste contract clauses aimed at helping organisations reduce carbon emissions.
The free technology provides access to about 200 climate-related clauses developed by TCLP. The tool connects with popular legal AI software such as Harvey and Legora, and general AI software such as Open AI’s ChatGPT and Anthropic’s Claude, using API (application programming interface) technology.
Automating the communication will make it easier for lawyers to insert environmental clauses into broader legal contracts after they are checked by lawyers, TCLP said.
TCLP wrote the software code using various open-source technology, including Anthropic. It is used by organisations including the UK government’s Cabinet Office, telecom company Vodafone and law firm Clyde & Co.
“We’d like to make climate risk a bigger part of what goes into contracts,” TCLP’s director of digital, Felix Cohen, told GLP. The tool can help reduce the time lawyers spend drafting environmental clauses within contracts from weeks to hours, he said, noting that it gives them immediate access to years of best practice in drafting sustainability law clauses.
He added: “Lawyers want to insert climate-friendly clauses into contracts for commercial and… ideological reasons to be environmental. To do so, they have to overcome commercial resistance, internal resistance. People [are] effectively saying, ‘If we don’t need to do this, why would we do this? Will it cost us money? Will it cost us time?’ And so, anything that we can provide to grease the wheels [will be helpful for lawyers].”
In addition to the API-powered tool, TCLP has also released an open-source ‘Model Context Protocol’ server. The server lets AI assistants and agentic legal tools − software capable of performing tasks without human intervention – “compare clauses, benchmark drafting and identify opportunities to strengthen climate provisions or reduce greenwashing risk”, TCLP said.
The tool is designed to quicken early-stage research and drafting, subject to human overview, said TCLP.
Cohen said if TCLP is “loud enough” at this early stage of AI and legaltech, it is “an opportunity for our way of thinking to become quite standardised”.
In April, TCLP released a digital platform – TCLP Labs – whose features include a tracker to monitor whether or not firms have kept their promises on climate-based targets. It also highlights clauses that contradict climate or sustainability targets.
According to 2024 research by Wolters Kluwer, almost seven in 10 (68%) law firms and corporate legal departments in the US said they were seeing increased demand for environmental, social and governance (ESG) legal expertise. However, only 41% of corporate legal professionals and 29% of law firms at the time said they felt “very prepared” to meet the increased demand for legal advice on ESG.
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