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Lawyer Trilby Donald spends her days working her “dream job” at the Northern Land Council in Kakadu, working to secure land rights for Aboriginal Australians in the Top End. But when she was participating in the WorkforClimate Academy, her office looked quite different.
“I was working in the pro bono team at a commercial law firm when I heard about WorkforClimate,” she says. “I was responsible for running the environment and sustainability stream of work, finding clients in the space and bringing them into the firm.”
Inner-city corporate law firms might not leap to mind when it comes to climate action, but that’s kind of the point. To change the system, we need corporations and professional service industries to get on board. You can’t change corporate culture from the outside in, and thankfully, Trilby’s team were supportive.
“My firm did a good job at supporting people with external courses and training,” Trilby says. “So I proposed the WorkforClimate Academy to my boss, and he said, “Yep, cool. Go for it!”
The WorkforClimate Academy is a series of online learning modules covering six key action areas: climate knowledge, energy, direct emissions, Scope X emissions, money and advocacy. It’s self-directed, which means there are no set timetables or deadlines, and Trilby was able to complete the modules remotely. Very handy when you deal in billable hours.
“I think it’s easy in big organisations to feel powerless, but as a professional service organisation, we need to understand that, yeah, we do have influence. These companies are very anxious to retain their junior talent. We’re an investment for them, and they know we can go anywhere with a couple of clicks on LinkedIn.”
“I had a self-paced job, so the time commitment was quite easy for me,” she says. “and I learned so much. I couldn’t recommend it more. There’s a lot of websites about climate action, but having the most driven facilitators I’ve ever met, paired with content that’s directly relevant to being an employee – it was totally worth it.”
Trilby says the main takeaway from the course was that workers have power, no matter where they choose to work. It’s always possible to push for change, especially if you frame that change in language that corporations can understand: competitive advantage, cost savings, resilience to disruption, and potential new clients.
“I got a good grasp of the problem: we can’t leave the climate crisis up to corporations. At least, not just corporations,” she says. “For systemic change, you need people – quote unquote – ‘on the inside’.”
Trilby wasn’t a partner at the firm. She was technically a junior lawyer, but she had an ally in the organisation’s Head of Sustainability, and together they were able to start conversations the firm had never had before.
The senior partners came of age in the recycling era, and concepts like renewable energy transition, ethical super funds, Scope X emissions and climate advocacy were relatively new to them. Still, Trilby was persistent.
“Weirdly, with law firms, there’s no product per se,” she says. “Your only output is little six-minute units of time. But the thing I realised through the Academy was that, as employees, we have a lot more power than we think we do. Especially at service companies, like law firms.”
For Trilby, this realisation was inspiring – especially as a junior in the firm. “To be able to say, ‘These are the things we can do. This is the market standard. And it’s so easy to get started’ was empowering,” she says.
“The Academy helped me realise that you can make a difference within these organisations, any organisation. You just need to find your voice, and speak up.”
Trilby built a case study around Amazon’s green team, and how they were able to influence a conservative board towards climate action. That case study was worked into the firm’s overarching climate strategy.
She also teamed up with the Head of Sustainability who was looking for support to pitch a carbon audit, which the organisation had never done before, and approached the firm’s environmental working group, sharing some of the tips she’d learned in the WorkforClimate Academy.
“I think it’s easy in big organisations to feel powerless, but as a professional service organisation, we need to understand that, yeah, we do have influence,” she says. “These companies are very anxious to retain their junior talent. We’re an investment for them, and they know we can go anywhere with a couple of clicks on LinkedIn.”
After a while, Trilby and the environmental working group began to see results. “I did notice, in the last two years, the work that was pitched was very different,” she says. “The conversation had started to change.”
Most of all, Trilby says the Academy taught her she isn’t alone in the climate fight, even in the world of corporate law. The lessons she learned in the WorkforClimate Academy will be relevant wherever she goes.
“The Academy helped me realise that you can make a difference within these organisations, any organisation. You just need to find your voice, and speak up.”
Ready to take your workplace climate journey to the next level? Enrol in the WorkforClimate Academy today.
