On Wednesday 4 December, Extinction Rebellion occupied 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.

Extinction Rebellion: back at A&O Shearman

Activists 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 entered the building and occupied the lobby, while others sprayed the outside of the building with fake oil:

An oil derrick was outside the entrance, on which a Grim Reaper figure sat 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 filled with smoke and the sound of drums, and activists used a megaphone to spell out A&O Shearman’s crimes against the planet:

Police made a number of arrests:

Propping up climate breakdown

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.

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. 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.

Extinction Rebellion will be back

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, and we staged a climate crisis exhibition 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.

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” and “investing in new fossil fuel infrastructure is moral and economic madness”.

Yet fossil fuel emissions continue to rise and the current 12 month average temperature increase stands at 1.64º Celsius, 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”.

Extinction Rebellion demands:

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

2. All existing A&O Shearman employees to refuse to work for their fossil fuel clients or leave.

3. Any new legal talent to go and find work elsewhere.

Featured image and additional images via Extinction Rebellion

By The Canary

This post was originally published on Canary.