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UCL Laws has been a leader in access to justice and the incorporation of clinical education into the law degree programmes we offer.
Since 2023, UCL Laws has collaborated with ClientEarth to offer a research and policy-oriented clinic that allows undergraduate and graduate students to engage with challenge legal issues in the intersection of corporate/financial law and environmental law. The Research Clinic focused on developing research skills for policy impact and creates inputs to inform ClientEarth’s engagement with governments and civil society.
In 2023/2024, the partnership hosted the UCL Laws/ClientEarth Transition Finance Research Clinic. During the Research Clinic, undergraduate and graduate students were able to conduct, through a number of targeted research exercises and interactive workshops, a series of analyses of greenwashing (or “transition-washing”) in markets for sustainability-linked and transition-labelled debt finance. Their analysis informed a policy brief produced by ClientEarth and resulted in a series of three policy reviews:
In 2024/2024, the partnership is hosting the Law, Finance and Systems Change Research Clinic. The Research Clinic will focus on ClientEarth’s Project Pandora, which examines (i) the legal structures, rules and conventions that set and enforce the deep code of today’s toxic and self-serving financial system, blocking the emergence of alternatives (a primarily diagnostic exercise); and (ii) the alternative legal structures, rules or conventions that would activate the emergence of an alternative system in which finance flows into and supports economic activities that benefit people and planet (leverage points).