About a year ago, I reported on a new movement that would hold law firms to the U.N. Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, and I promised to track the trend. In February 2012 the American Bar Association’s House of Delegates endorsed the Ruggie principles, as they are also known, and urged the legal community to integrate them into their operations and practices.
With its president and president-elect attending this December’s U.N. Forum on Business and Human Rights, the ABA is leading from the front on this issue. But where is the legal community’s response to the ABA’s clarion call? Many law firms advise clients to embrace business human rights, and no one denies that law firms are businesses. Yet in my perusal of leading law firm reports on corporate social responsibility (CSR), I have been unable to find any discussion of the Ruggie principles.
