The Grim Reaper joins the protest
Extinction Rebellion (XR) protestors targeted the offices of City giant A&O Shearman this week with a demand that it cut ties with the fossil fuel industry “immediately”.
It also called on all staff to refuse to work for their fossil fuel clients or leave, and urged would-be lawyers to boycott the firm.
Five people were reportedly arrested after protestors occupied the magic circle firm’s lobby on Wednesday, while others sprayed the outside of the building with fake oil.
An XR statement said: “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.”
It represented a major escalation in protest from last Friday, when representatives of campaign group Lawyers Are Responsible brought doctors and scientists to the offices of the magic circle firms to highlight the role of lawyers in enabling the fossil fuel industry.
Saying that A&O Shearman “has been silent” in the face of Lawyers Are Responsible’s calls, XR noted that the pre-merger firms of Allen & Overy and Shearman Sterling were both individually given the worst rating in the Law Students for Climate Accountability 2024 scorecard because of their work with oil and gas companies.
Marcus Bailie, an activist who travelled up from South Wales to take part, said: “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…
“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.”
Police remove a protestor from A&O’s lobby
Melanie Strickland from Lawyers Are Responsible added: “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.
A protestor sprays fake oil over the building
“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.”
We have approached A&O Shearman for comment.
