Leading the green trend.

• Author: Stickel, Amy I.

Marketers, staff and attorneys at Wendel, Rosen, Black & Dean LLP know all about the challenges that law firms face when trying to go green. But it can be done, according to the marketing director and executive director at the world's first law firm to be certified a "green business" five years ago.

"We decided we were going to be the leaders in this area for our industry," Lydia Bednerik, marketing director at Wendel Rosen, told attendees during a session at the 22nd Annual LMA Conference in Los Angeles.

The start was a little rocky, admitted Gina Maciula, the executive director of the Oakland, Calif.-based firm. "Originally, we kind of went kicking and screaming into this green thing," she said. It was one enthusiastic associate--an "eco-vangelist and his mighty band of tree-huggers," in Maciula's words--who pushed the firm to make a serious commitment to sustainability. There was scepticism throughout the firm, not least because Wendel Rosen has a very active construction practice. These are clients who, in Maciula's words, "really don't care about the sweet little frog on their land."

Once Wendel Rosen decided to launch a green program, it hired a sustainability consultant, created a team with representatives from across the firm and analyzed every aspect of its business following the Bay Area Green Business Program's checklist (www.wendel.com/pdf/The_Green_Trend_Checklist.pdf). The program involved many aspects, including pollution prevention, lighting, energy saving, recycling, water conservation and cutting back on that most ubiquitous of law firm supplies, paper.

It wasn't always easy at first, according to Maciula. There were the experiments with environmentally friendly spoons that fell...