G&A, Ropes & Gray Publish Study on Cross-Function Collaboration in Changing Sustainability Landscape
NEW YORK CITY, NY / ACCESS Newswire / July 30, 2026 / Sustainability consulting and research firm Governance & Accountability Institute (G&A) and global law firm Ropes & Gray have released new research on interactions between sustainability and legal teams within companies, at a time of increasing sustainability-related regulation and oversight.
The report, titled Side by Side: Sustainability and Legal - A Look Inside Two Corporate Functions Navigating Complexity & Uncertainty Together, finds that regulation is driving greater collaboration and re-ordering of reporting lines. While the stakes and demands are rising, corporate sustainability teams and sustainability-focused legal teams continue to be quite lean, requiring professionals to wear many hats and make the most of limited resources. All of this makes effective cross-functional collaboration more important, and the results of our engagement clearly indicate that this has already begun and all signs point to it continuing to increase.
The researchers engaged sustainability and legal professionals from 35 leading companies across a range of industries through a structured survey and in-depth interviews. Our engagement took place between September 2025 and February 2026, a time marked by the ramp-up and subsequent pause of portions of California's climate disclosure laws, the stay of the climate-related disclosure rules of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), revisions to the EU's Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), and other reversals and evolutions. Taking stock of corporate teams' experiences during this time revealed that the work of corporate sustainability has changed dramatically in just the past few years.
In light of these rising demands and quickly changing expectations, it is clear that sustainability is increasingly intertwined with compliance and legal concerns. Amidst the pressures and uncertainties, the story that emerges is one of greater functional overlap between sustainability and compliance, and as a result, sustainability and legal teams adapting quickly. This means increasingly working hand-in-hand, and navigating the benefits and challenges that emerge as they do so.
The report details:
Current state of sustainability-focused teams
Which regulations are most responsible for the increase in pressure on sustainability and legal teams
Specific risks companies see increasing
Reported benefits and challenges of collaboration
Current gaps in support for in-house teams
Actions that can improve collaboration between sustainability and legal teams
Louis Coppola, Chief Executive Officer & Co-Founder at G&A, remarked, "In G&A's 20 years advising companies at the intersection of sustainability and governance, we've watched this collaboration between sustainability and legal teams grow into one of the defining operational questions for corporate sustainability programs - 39% of the sustainability functions in our research now report into legal, 87% of sustainability leaders told us regulation has increased their interactions with legal in the past year alone, and not one expects their role in this work to decrease. What stands out most is the alignment: put a sustainability leader and a chief legal officer in the same room and they largely tell you the same things about what they need. G&A is ready to help companies use these findings to build stronger, more effective collaboration between these two functions."
Michael Littenberg, Partner and Global Head of the ESG, CSR and Business and Human Rights Compliance Practice at global law firm Ropes & Gray, added, "We are delighted to have partnered with G&A on this important piece of research. It confirms trends we are seeing in the market and will help companies with their future planning and efforts to build an effective, efficient sustainability compliance function."
The report is available through G&A's research hub.
About G&A Institute
For more information, visit https://www.ga-institute.com.
About Ropes & Gray
For more information, visit https://www.ropesgray.com/.
Media Contact:
Louis D. Coppola, CEO & Co-Founder
Governance & Accountability Institute, Inc.
Tel 646.430.8230 ext 14
Email lcoppola@ga-institute.com
Side by Side: Sustainability and Legal -A Look Inside Two Corporate Functions Navigating Complexity & Uncertainty Together
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SOURCE: Governance & Accountability Institute
View the original press release on ACCESS Newswire:
https://www.accessnewswire.com/newsroom/en/business-and-professional-services/new-research-identifies-rising-collaboration-among-sustainabilit-1198812
