Climate activists occupy London HQ of law firm that supports Big Oil - Extinction Rebellion UK

Climate activists occupy London HQ of law firm that supports Big Oil

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Extinction Rebellion protestors storm headquarters of international law firm A&O Shearman to demand they ‘Cut The Ties With Fossil Fuels’

Extinction Rebellion is today (4 December) occupying the headquarters of an international law firm that is playing a leading role in oiling the legal wheels of the deadly fossil fuel machine setting our planet on fire. 

Activists have targeted the City of London offices of A&O Shearman – whose lawyers facilitated more than $285 billion in fossil fuel transactions between 2019 and 2023, the second highest amount for any legal firm in the world – demanding they ‘Cut The Ties With Fossil Fuels.’

Rebels have entered the building and are occupying the lobby, while others spray the outside of the building with fake oil. An oil derrick is outside the entrance, on which a Grim Reaper figure sits holding a scythe and a set of scales, with a burning planet in one pan and a pile of oily cash in the other. The air is filled with smoke and the sound of drums, and activists are using a megaphone to spell out A&O Shearman’s crimes against the planet. 

A&O Shearman’s record as an enabler of climate breakdown is wrecking its reputation amongst up-and-coming legal talent. Prior to their merger, Allen & Overy and Shearman Sterling were both individually given the worst rating ‘F’ in the Law Students for Climate Accountability 2024 scorecard. [1] [2]

A&O Shearman advises clients across the oil and gas industry, from exploration and production, pipelines, refining. It acts for governments, energy companies such as Saudi Aramco, Chevron, oil field services companies and investors on some of the world’s largest oil and gas transactions. [3] These companies are significantly expanding oil and gas production, even as mounting levels of greenhouse gas emissions threaten to trip irreversible climate tipping points, making the planet unrecognisable and accelerating mass extinctions.

A&O Shearman has been silent in the face of mounting criticism from campaign group Lawyers are Responsible over their complicity in the climate emergency.

Today’s action is an escalation from last week, when Lawyers are Responsible, along with doctors and scientists, targeted five law firms including A&O Shearman, who are  collectively responsible for over £285 billion of fossil fuel transactions.

At the protest was Dr Sara Melly from Hampshire, who said “We demand A&O Shearman cut their ties with the fossil fuel industry immediately, for existing A&O Shearman employees to refuse to work for fossil fuel clients or leave, and for new legal talent to go and find work elsewhere. The future is in renewable energy and in prosecuting Big Oil for knowingly causing death and destruction from global heating and climate change.”

Marcus Bailie, an activist who travelled up from the South Wales Valleys, said: “Many will have seen the flooded houses and businesses featured in national news. That’s all people are talking about in Pontpridd and everybody knows the cause. It is outrageous that A&O Shearman and other major law firms are still enabling fossil fuel extraction even as the signs of current warming are plain and obvious to see. Carbon dioxide lasts 100 years in the upper atmosphere, so the damage they do now will cause a century of harm, they are enabling an existential threat. Lawyers are going to have to choose what’s more important to their reputation – profit at any cost or saying no to work that is destroying communities.”

 Melanie Strickland from Lawyers are Responsible said “It is disgraceful that A&O Shearman is facilitating and profiting from climate and ecological collapse. Lawyers are Responsible have written to Allen & Overy twice to demand they stop enabling the fossil fuel industry[4], and we staged a climate crisis exhibition[5] outside the merged firm A&O Shearman in November 2024. Yet A&O Shearman make no comment. 

“Lawyers work in a public profession. As lawyers, we are granted professional status on behalf of the public. It is a privilege, and it entails the responsibility to uphold the public interest. A&O Shearman is aggressively pursuing the interests of its clients, such as ADNOC, at the expense of life on Earth, and its lawyers are massively lining their own pockets in doing so. Lawyers are Responsible believes that it is possible for lawyers to be part of the solution, and we want our fellow professionals in these firms to be part of the solution.”

Also taking part in the action today was James Knapp, 58, from Dorking, who said “Companies that facilitate new fossil fuel production at this late stage bear a responsibility for its effects. Climate change is having a particularly profound impact on the Global South where they are more susceptible to climate related disasters, with many countries experiencing devastating impacts on their economies, ecosystems, and to human well-being. Profiting from this suffering is unconscionable and reeks of desperate greed. In the end none of us can survive an overheated planet.”

Speaking at the G20 Summit last month UN Secretary-General António Guterres said “Our climate is at a breaking point. Unless we limit global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius, spiralling disasters will devastate every economy.”[6] and “investing in new fossil fuel infrastructure is moral and economic madness.”[7] Yet fossil fuel emissions continue to rise and the current 12 month average temperature increase stands at 1.64º Celsius[8], already breaching the Paris Agreement’s safe limit. As The Lancet reported “The science is unequivocal; a global increase of 1.5°C above the pre-industrial average and the continued loss of biodiversity risk catastrophic harm to health that will be impossible to reverse.”[9]

Extinction Rebellion demands:

1. We demand A&O Shearman cut their ties with the fossil fuel industry immediately.

2. We call on all existing A&O Shearman employees to refuse to work for their fossil fuel clients or leave.

3. We call on all new legal talent to go and find work elsewhere.


Notes to editors

[1] P.30 2024 Score card https://www.ls4ca.org/s/FINAL_2024_Climate_Scorecard_LSCA.pdf

[2] https://www.ls4ca.org/scorecard

[3] https://www.aoshearman.com/en/industries/energy/oil-and-gas

[4] https://www.lar.earth/magic-circle-actions/

[5] https://www.lar.earth/press-release-climate-crisis-exhibition/

[6] Speaking at the G20 Summit last month https://news.un.org/en/story/2024/11/1157176

[7] Secretary-General Warns of Climate Emergency, Calling Intergovernmental Panel’s Report ‘a File of Shame’, While Saying Leaders ‘Are Lying’, Fuelling Flames, 4 April 2022, available at: https://press.un.org/en/2022/sgsm21228.doc.htm

[8] https://berkeleyearth.org/october-2024-temperature-update/

[9] IPPC 2018 quoted here: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(21)01915-2/fulltext#%20

About Extinction Rebellion

Extinction Rebellion (XR) is a decentralised, international and politically non-partisan movement using nonviolent direct action and civil disobedience to persuade governments to act justly on the Climate and Ecological Emergency.

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