Strong growth in ESG advice at GvW: law firm joins forces in new focus area

Law plays a central role in the transformation towards a more sustainable economy. Hardly any other area is currently developing as dynamically as advice on environmental social governance. The increasing demand from companies for advice on ESG issues and the need for even stronger interdisciplinary networking of ESG expertise at GvW Graf von Westphalen has prompted the firm's management to bundle the firm's resources even more strongly in an independent ESG focus area. The new focus area will be headed by the Head of ESG & Sustainability Dr. Annika Bleier from the Hamburg office and the Munich energy law partner Dr. Maximilian Emanuel Elspas.

"No topic requires such strong interdisciplinary and cross-location cooperation as ESG. It is therefore a logical step to continue the successful expansion of our ESG team by developing it into a focus area with an even stronger focus on business development," explain Christof Kleinmann and Dr. Robert Theissen, Managing Partners of the law firm. "We are focusing on three pillars of advice in the fields of green trade, green transformation and social & governance."

The new Green Trade team, led by Hamburg partner Dr. Lothar Harings, supports companies on all sustainability issues along the supply chain. In addition to compliance advice, the ten-strong core team focuses on the areas of strategy, crisis and litigation. The lawyers' current key areas of advice include the Supply Chain Sustainability Act (LkSG), Deforestation Free Supply Chain (EUDR) and Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM).

The Green Transformation area at GvW is driven by the co-head of the Energy focus area, Dr. Maximilian Emanuel Elspas. The Green Transformation team, which includes lawyers from various specialist areas, supports private and public companies as well as the public sector with all legal issues on the path to climate neutrality. Current areas of focus are renewable energies, hydrogen, construction & real estate, the circular economy as well as financing and funding.

Thanks to its holistic approach, the law firm also covers all sustainability issues relating to social & governance that are relevant for companies. As the central interface, Dr. Annika Bleier brings the topics together and further develops the business area together with lawyers from different practice groups. When advising on topics such as fair work, human rights, CSRD or green and pink washing, clients benefit from the combined expertise and Dr. Bleier's responsibility at GvW for the firm's own sustainability strategy.