In February 2020, Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati announced it is doubling its commitment in the Lawyers for a Sustainable Economy (LSE) initiative to at least $4 million. LSE is a groundbreaking initiative to deliver free legal services worth $20 million by the end of 2020 to advance sustainability across the globe. Wilson Sonsini was one of the nine major law firms that launched LSE at the 2018 Global Climate Action Summit.

Since September 2018, Wilson Sonsini has provided pro bono legal assistance to 23 entrepreneurs and community-based non-profits taking on key sustainability and climate challenges in energy, transportation, and land use. Some highlights include the following:

• ACORE: Wilson Sonsini teamed up with the American Council on Renewable Energy (ACORE) to publish Enacting a Federal High-Penetration Renewable Energy Standard, described how a renewable energy standard (RES) would most effectively put electric utilities throughout the United States on a pathway to a carbon-neutral power sector. In addition to providing recommendations regarding the central components of a federal RES—such as timeline and qualifying technologies—Wilson Sonsini and ACORE addressed how policymakers crafting such legislation should also consider stranded assets, grid reliability, the need for transmission and energy storage infrastructure buildout, and the importance of a socioeconomically fair transition to a carbon-free power sector (e.g., by way of catalyzing robust employment opportunities in regions historically dominated by fossil fuel industries).
• California Solar Electric Company: Wilson Sonsini assisted the California Solar Electric Company, a solar installer in Nevada County, in its conversion to an employee-owned co-op. Cal Solar is the first ever worker-owned cooperative in Nevada County, and the first worker-owned solar cooperative in California.
• Energy Peace Partners: Wilson Sonsini assisted Energy Peace Partners (EPP) with their formation and fiscal sponsorship agreement with the California Clean Energy Fund (CalCEF). Energy Peace Partners leverages economic and climate solutions to support peace in the world's most fragile regions. Their climate-sensitive approach expands the existing toolkit for supporting peace and development by extending the renewable energy revolution to some of the most vulnerable populations on the planet. Wilson Sonsini put together the first Peace Renewable Energy Credit (PREC) term sheet and form agreement and has counseled EPP in structuring the role of the PREC as part of the development of energy projects in development in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and South Sudan.
• Nature Conservancy: In February 2019, a Wilson Sonsini pro bono team represented The Nature Conservancy in a ground-breaking issuance of $40 million aggregate principal amount of 4.496 percent Taxable Bonds, Series 2019A, and $62 million aggregate principal amount of Floating Rate Taxable Bonds, Series 2019B, in an underwritten offering. J.P. Morgan and BofA Merrill Lynch were the underwriters for the offering. The net proceeds of the offering was used to redeem The Nature Conservancy's outstanding 6.30 percent Bonds due July 1, 2019. The Nature Conservancy was established in 1951, and its mission is to conserve the lands and waters on which all life depends.
• Sabin Center for Climate Change Law: Wilson Sonsini, along with more than twenty law firms across the country, is working with Columbia’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law to draft model legal documents to implement the recommendations from Legal Pathways to Deep Decarbonization in the United States, a book edited by Professors Michael Gerrard and John Dernbach. The book identifies more than 1,000 legal options for reducing U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by at least 80 percent from 1990 levels by 2050. The legal options identified involve federal, state, and local law, as well as private governance. Once drafted, these model legal documents will be made available through an online clearinghouse, established and managed by the Sabin Center, for use and implementation by policymakers at the local, regional, state, and federal levels.
• Sustainable Ocean Alliance: Wilson Sonsini is working with Sustainable Ocean Alliance in its efforts to develop leaders, cultivate ideas, and accelerate solutions around the world to promote ocean health and sustainability. Through supporting Sustainable Ocean Alliance’s start-up accelerator program, Ocean Solutions Accelerator, the firm helps prepare ocean entrepreneurs to market, scale, and raise capital for their sustainable innovations in the fields of clean energy, fisheries management, hydrocarbon and plastics extraction, upcycling and closed loop innovations, ocean data analytics, and assisted evolution for corals.

For more information about the initiative, please see the LSE website.