Statement on Slavery and Human Trafficking

This Statement was issued on 29 June 2023 on behalf of White & Case LLP, a New York state registered limited liability partnership, White & Case LLP and White & Case (Europe) LLP, limited liability partnerships incorporated under English law and White & Case EMEA Services Limited, a private limited company incorporated under English law. This Statement constitutes the slavery and human trafficking statement for the financial year ended 31 December 2022 (the “Statement”) for those White & Case entities, and it was reviewed and approved by White & Case’s Executive Committee on 29 June 2023 in accordance with the provisions of Section 54(1) of the UK Modern Slavery Act 2015.

1. Introduction

Integrity and service are core values of our Firm. We are proud to be a signatory to the United Nations Global Compact (“UN Global Compact”). Our affirmation of the ten principles of the UN Global Compact is appended here.

We are committed to responsible business practices protecting human rights. We have adopted a zero tolerance approach to all forms of slavery and human trafficking (“modern slavery”) in our organisation and supply chain, and we are focused on identifying, reporting and addressing any human rights risks or abuses in our operations or our supply chain.

2. Our business and supply chains

White & Case is a global law firm comprising the four entities referred to above and their related partnerships and associations (the “Firm”). Our business activities centre around the provision of legal services to clients globally. Please click here for a list of our offices and the jurisdictions in which we operate.

Our key suppliers are businesses that provide the goods and services we need (i) to operate our offices; and (ii) to support the provision of legal services to our clients.

Our Global Citizenship Committee was launched in 2022 with the mission of elevating the Firm’s commitment to Global Citizenship and unifying our people through a shared sense of responsibility for our local, regional and global communities. Our Responsible Business Subcommittee leads on ESG and sustainability efforts across our operations, which includes ensuring the risk of modern slavery is minimised in our business and supply chain. Our Subcommittee has a core membership of our General Counsels, partners, associates, procurement and other business services professionals from across the Firm.

3. Policies

Our annual UN Global Compact Communication on Progress (“CoP”) demonstrates our commitment to doing business responsibly by aligning our operations with ten principles related to human rights, labour, the environment and anti-corruption. Please click here for our 2022 CoP. For 2023, we are participating in the UN Global Compact’s enhanced CoP and will complete its new standardised questionnaire. We have internal policies and procedures that demonstrate our commitment to eradicating the risk of modern slavery in our business and supply chain. These include our Supplier Code of Conduct, as well as our Procurement policy. Our Whistleblowing policy encourages personnel to report suspected wrongdoing as soon as possible, in the knowledge that their concerns will be taken seriously, investigated promptly and that their confidentiality will be respected, consistent with adequate investigation and remediation. These policies are made available to all our employees through our intranet and we have a number of training sessions that refer to, and explain, these policies.

Key progress

Since 2015, White & Case has participated in annual assessments with EcoVadis, the world’s largest provider of business sustainability ratings that uses a methodology aligned to international standards. Each year we submit evidence of our progress on labour and human rights, ethics, environment and sustainable procurement, which includes sharing relevant internal policies and results in a scorecard outlining strengths and areas of improvement. We have steadily improved our scoring every year since 2015. Additionally, an increasing number of the Firm’s clients are now EcoVadis members and receive our annual scorecard.

We completed reviews of an additional 100 vendors in our supplier risk platform and have now completed reviews for over 500 vendors.

4. Risk assessment and due diligence

Our business

As a professional services firm regulated in the various jurisdictions in which we operate, we have assessed the risk of modern slavery to be low in our operations. We support public accountability and transparency and are committed to reporting and regularly reviewing our assessment to ensure that we are continually improving our practices.

We confirm that we have in place systems to ensure full compliance with relevant labour laws relating to employee terms and conditions, including pay.

Our supply chain

We expect our suppliers to share our values, but we recognise that there is a risk of modern slavery in our supply chain, particularly in the higher risk jurisdictions in which we operate. Therefore, we continue to enhance our robust supply chain compliance programme, which focuses in particular on suppliers in those higher risk jurisdictions. Our supply chain compliance programme:

imposes contractual obligations on key suppliers, with obligations related to compliance with relevant laws (including those related to modern slavery) and requirements to impose similar standards on their suppliers;
requires new key suppliers to provide us with pertinent information to help us determine the risks to us in entering into a business relationship with them;
requires our key suppliers to provide information on what policies they have in place to address modern slavery risks in their business and supply chains;
provides for monitoring of the jurisdictions in which our key suppliers operate to identify any risks and conducting market reviews of key services by a formal tender process, with an emphasis on the values that matter to us; and
provides a contractual right to audit the performance and working practices of our key suppliers.

Key progress

The Firm’s Business & Human Rights Interest Group continues to support our lawyers in providing assistance to our commercial clients on the legal and reputational risks and opportunities they face in addressing human rights issues in their operations and supply chains. This Group also provides support on modern slavery or human rights issues as part of mandates, including human rights due diligence for a range of transactions.

The Responsible Business Subcommittee undertook a risk assessment of our internal operations. We reviewed our high risk practice areas like real estate, as well as our top suppliers and their jurisdictions. We then completed reviews of an additional 100 vendors in our supplier risk platform based on their jurisdictions.

Anti-slavery and anti-corruption contract language is also included in all contract renewals and we now have this in place with over 200 suppliers.

5. Training

The Firm provides a broad range of training designed to increase awareness, knowledge and skills around identifying, addressing and/or preventing modern slavery risks.

Our Business & Human Rights Interest Group has also supported the roll-out of practice area training on ESG, business and human rights for each of the Firm’s major practice areas, tailored for each region. For information about the group, please visit www.whitecase.com/law/practices/business-human-rights.

6. Next steps

Our priorities for 2023 and beyond are as follows:

Continue with additional training for Firm partners and employees who are involved in managing our supplier relationships across our Firm, to enable them to recognise risk factors more easily.
Proceed with further steps necessary to finalise our Global Code of Conduct.
Put our next 500 suppliers through the risk platform.
Roll out an ESG questionnaire in 2023 to our top suppliers.
For 2023, we are participating in the UN Global Compact’s enhanced CoP and will complete its new standardised questionnaire.

Download Statement on Slavery and Human Trafficking
For the financial year ended 31 December 2022 (PDF)

Statements on Slavery and Human Trafficking from previous years

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White & Case Global Citizenship