The Uncertain Solicitor reflects on Carlo Rovelli’s book on quantum mechanics, Helgoland, and the potential lessons in it for lawyers.

“Over the last thirty years (and beyond), the context has generally been that law firms have not been expected to consider the consequences of their clients’ activities on which they advise. They have just been contributing to the operation of the global economy. For the next thirty years (and beyond), the context is different. Continuing to advise on activities which generate carbon emissions, destroy biodiversity and make the oceans effectively uninhabitable for marine life is consciously contributing to reasonably foreseeable harm. It is vicarious liability at such a scale that it is unenforceable. Or that might be the legal position: we are all culpable, so what is the purpose in prosecuting?”