Meet our ESG team: Dearbhla Cantwell

Dearbhla Cantwell, who chose a degree in law with French law at University College Dublin, always knew she wanted an international element in her career. Although she admits, “At that stage, I wasn’t too sure exactly where I wanted my career to go, or even what the ‘day job’ in the legal profession looked like, but a role with an international element was definitely a part of what I was looking for.”

After her first taste of the corporate world with a summer internship at Mason Hayes & Curran, she returned as a trainee and discovered that she enjoyed having a mix of both transactional and advisory work. However, ESG wasn't really on her radar until she joined the Construction and Energy team, where she says, "I gained experience advising on numerous on-shore wind energy projects... and all the different strands of ESG began to click with me – climate change, energy transition and the regulatory aspects of all of that."

Dearbhla's interest in ESG led her to the Linklaters Environment and Climate Change team. She recalls, "The team felt so collegial. Vanessa and Rachel are such generous people and leaders. The impression I always had is that they enjoy their roles as mentors and developers of their junior team members as much as they do their own work."

Now a Managing Associate in the ESG group, Dearbhla has had fantastic experiences, such as a client secondment to Nestlé and most recently to Barclays. Reflecting on her work, she says, "The variety of work and the learning opportunities all light a fire in me every day. ESG involves tangible issues that affect how clients implement their commercial strategy, and it is great to be part of a team advising them on how to do that in various ways."

Dearbhla believes that an understanding of what a legal role in ESG involves is growing: “Practising law in the ESG space opens up a really varied and broad experience... It’s a specialist area and there is huge interest in it from the younger generation as well... It helps that all of us here are genuinely interested in sustainability, even outside our day jobs – it’s an inherent passion.”

She's eager to see how legal practice in ESG will continue to evolve, especially in areas like biodiversity, carbon offsetting, and green claims. Dearbhla adds, "I’m also keen to see the role that new technologies will play in decarbonising various sectors and what opportunities this will open up for our clients."

When she's not working, Dearbhla loves to travel, get out of the city, and practice pilates. As a way to unwind, she says, “I always make a point of reading at least one chapter of a good book every day, however busy I may have been.”