In celebrating 200 years (1822-2022) we honoured one of our founders, William Henry Ashurst, who was deeply committed to social justice, particularly women's equality and the abolition of slavery. William's four daughters also poured their energy into the fight to abolish slavery and the fight to achieve equality for women, forming correspondence networks across countries and movements.
Our Modern Slavery Action Plan, first launched in 2019, provides a way for us to acknowledge their legacy and commit to actioning that legacy on an issues that remains a major threat today. We have since updated this framework to reflect and build upon what we have learned through our award winning work in this area. We continue to grow our knowledge and expertise with our people, clients and communities.
1. Understanding our role in the global anti-slavery movement
| Objectives | Implementing actions |
|---|---|
| Understand our role in addressing Modern Slavery | Critically examine all aspects of modern slavery to understand where we can best play a role as a global law firm |
| Continue to monitor our pro bono practice for opportunities to expand or mirror existing work across additional jurisdictions | |
| Collaborate and work in partnership with not-for-profits leading efforts in the anti-slavery movement to understand their work and achieve maximum impact | Maintain meaningful partnerships with organisations in the anti-slavery movement; understand their aspirations, priorities and challenges; and work with them to leverage the firm's resources and stakeholders in respect of these needs |
| Implement pro bono and non-legal volunteering projects through which we can support the infrastructure and programmatic work of anti-slavery not-for-profits | |
| Build on our efforts to support the work of existing anti-slavery networks | |
| Understand where we can support survivors of slavery | Continue our work with organisations in the anti-slavery movement to understand the issues facing those affected by slavery and our place in assisting them |
| Provide pro bono assistance to survivors of modern slavery, including by partnering with specialist organisations that work with survivors | |
| Provide programmatic opportunities to survivors of modern slavery | |
| Collaborate with the legal and business community to leverage and maximise all work in this space | Collaborate with the wider legal community and identify potential opportunities to combine resources to combat slavery |
| Engage with the broader business community on issues relevant to modern slavery to enable cross-collaboration and maximising of resources | |
| Ensure our people engage with anti-slavery efforts | Ensure our people engage with anti-slavery efforts Celebrate 'Anti-Slavery Day' and use other events as opportunities to support anti-slavery initiatives and update all employees on our progress Provide meaningful opportunities for our people to engage with anti-slavery efforts through: (i) directly supporting organisations working with survivors of modern slavery, and (ii) empowering them to ask questions and make informed purchasing decisions that contribute to reducing the risk of modern slavery, both within the firm and personally. |
2. Building our knowledge to inspire change
| Objectives | Implementing actions |
|---|---|
| Develop a global knowledge-sharing infrastructure to enable our people to understand modern slavery | Continue to share knowledge and strategically embed our modern slavery work into our unique culture, so that everyone at the firm learns more about modern slavery |
| Identify opportunities to bring in specialist not-for-profits, including partner organisations, to share knowledge with our people | |
| Encourage internal communities of practice to build and share knowledge around elements of modern slavery, that will allow us to move the dial as a collective | |
| Invite our stakeholders to join us on our learning journey | Report on our progress |
| Engage with commercial clients to consider synergies around modern slavery |
3. Moving beyond compliance
| Objectives | Implementing actions |
|---|---|
| Comply with our global reporting requirements as a business in relation to modern slavery | Comply with reporting requirements in each jurisdiction that has requirements |
| Consider how we can go beyond reporting requirements in each jurisdiction, including mapping suppliers and reviewing contracts | |
| Ensure that all relevant activities across the firm are captured for the above reporting purposes | Ensure that all relevant activities across the firm are captured for the above reporting purposes Ensure that all relevant firm policies reference and enable our compliance with modern slavery regulations, and introduce new policies as required |
| Review internal processes and update where necessary to ensure activities are captured for reporting purposes | |
| Capture activities on our new global social impact reporting platform and our time recording system and ensure they are referenced in annual reporting on compliance activities | |
| Encourage all departments to consider how we can build on these activities to move beyond basic compliance | |
| Risk Disclosure | Report any risks we might have and how we have dealt with these |
| Human Rights Due Diligence | Conduct human rights risk assessments and review findings |
| Remediation Planning | Plan corrective actions including complaint handling |
| Build and share knowledge on compliance framework | Support the compliance-focused community of practice to share their knowledge with each other and the rest of the firm |
| Consider how we can work with our clients around compliance (inform, advise and enable) | Identify where we can convene gatherings and other activities through which insight and best practice can be shared across industries |
| Continue to build our own knowledge and expertise to ensure we can be the best commercial adviser to our commercial clients in this area | |
| Advise commercial clients on key considerations for Modern Slavery reporting | |
| Look for opportunities to deploy this compliance knowledge and expertise through our pro bono work with not-for-profit organisations |