Legal & Accounting Services

CSRD for Legal and Accounting Firms: Two Roles to Play

Small and growing businesses (SMEs) in legal and accounting services face CSRD from two angles. First, as advisers — your clients need help understanding whether CSRD or VSME applies to them, what to disclose, and how to respond to buyer questionnaires. Second, as reporters — if your firm supplies larger corporate clients or public-sector bodies, you may yourself receive data requests on your office operations, workforce, and business conduct.

The direct compliance burden is usually modest. Professional services firms have low direct environmental impact — mainly office energy, business travel, and IT infrastructure. But the reputational and commercial stakes are high: clients increasingly expect their legal and accounting advisers to be credible on sustainability, not least because they are the ones helping clients prepare their own reports.

Typical Data Requests for Advisory Firms

• Office energy — electricity consumption (often the main Scope 2 footprint)
• Business travel — flights, rail, hotel nights; typically the largest Scope 3 category
• IT and data centre — cloud services, on-premise servers, software emissions
• Workforce — headcount, gender pay, training hours, working-time tracking
• Business conduct — anti-corruption policies, conflict-of-interest procedures, professional independence controls
• Client ESG due diligence — increasingly required when advising on M&A, IPOs, and regulatory matters

Your Firm's Two Paths

For direct reporting, most advisory SMEs are best served by VSME Basic — the 11-disclosure voluntary standard. It covers the topics clients will ask about without the full ESRS and assurance overhead. For advising clients, depth matters — understanding the mechanics of double materiality, the ESRS topic set, and the transition from limited to reasonable assurance helps your firm add real value to client conversations.

The articles below cover both sides: how to prepare your own VSME disclosures efficiently, and how to guide clients through CSRD applicability, materiality assessments, and supplier data responses.