As a firm we recognise the importance of engaging in responsible procurement that delivers not only long-term benefits to us as a firm but will also benefit our stakeholders. We are committed to the procurement of environmentally sustainable products and services where possible by ensuring consideration is given to service partners’ environmental credentials in the selection process. We want our suppliers to demonstrate their sustainable credentials because, when we can, we want to work with organisations and suppliers that share our sustainable business ethos.

As part of our ISO27001 certification process we have a Supplier Code of Conduct for our firm. This outlines the standards that we expect from vendors in our supply chain. We want to understand and fully assess those we are working with as this ensures that we can actively manage our suppliers in what is an increasingly complex supply chain environment. As part of our supplier assessments, we ask suppliers about their ESG commitments in detail. We do this because we want to establish if they are the right partner for us.

Over the past 12 months, suppliers continue to be key stakeholders in our sustainable business efforts and this work is led by our Risk and Compliance team. Through our vendor management processes we have, and continue to, foster key and trustworthy relationships with all types of suppliers to the firm. We are pleased to report that we have carried out this ESG assessment in respect of 21 of our suppliers. We ask all our suppliers to review our Supplier Code of Conduct which outlines our commitments and ask them to develop policies and processes that are in line with ours.

An effective supplier management programme gives us with the scope to:

• Develop our ability to work with quality suppliers
• Positively impact on ESG
• Reduce supply chain risk

To deliver legal services in an effective way, we aim to evaluate our suppliers to understand how we can derive as much value as possible while enhancing our own capabilities. Through this we continue to better understand the supplier environment by identifying risks and opportunities for improvement.