Whilst Allen & Overy appear to have the heaviest output of the The Legal Sector Alliance (LSA) members at an obese 8.13 tonnes. The average for 2009 was 3.70 tonnes per employee.

The figures come from The Legal Sector Alliance’s Carbon Footprint Report 2009 which it has now published. The LSA is made up of a group of firms that are doing their bit to make the legal sector accountable for its carbon emmissions. You can have a look at the full results here.

The results vary a lot due to size, business models etc but there have been significant reductions since last year. Eversheds for example, had the greatest overall reduction, with a 26.6% fall, and Burges Salmon had the greatest reduction in the average amount of carbon emitted per employee, with a 11.9% fall. Allen & Overy have seen an overall drop of 7% and a per employee drop of 6.38%. So organic.

LSA: The results reveal an overall reduction in absolute carbon emissions of 4% among the LSA Executive members’ since the first public report in December 2008, demonstrating that carbon management remains a key priority for members, despite the economic downturn.

Or is that ‘because of’? We’re no statisticians here but with the massive reductions in headcount at many firms and the knock-on effect of reduced activity, wouldn’t a reduction in carbon emmissions be expected? After all isn’t that why industrial companies are now sitting on massive paper profits from all those unused carbon credits? Law firms aren’t dealing in heavy industry but still…

Revealingly, the LSA flags up the stat that “average carbon emitted per employee also decreased slightly (0.14%)”

Can you feel a bout of Freakonomics coming on?