Our Action Plan

Formalising our strategy

Ashurst formed this Modern Slavery Action Plan in 2019 to create a legacy for our founder William Ashurst and his four daughters' abolitionist efforts 200 years ago. Based on the below three principles, our aim was to build a framework for our firm to establish where we could best understand our role in the ongoing battle to combat all forms of modern slavery.

1. Understanding our role in the global anti-slavery movement
2. Building our knowledge to inspire change
3. Moving beyond compliance

Since then, we have built up award winning work in both pro bono and social impact, and it is time to update our plan to reflect and build upon what we have learned. The next stage in our journey is to dig deeper into our areas of success and continue to grow our knowledge and expertise with our people, clients and communities.

1. Understanding our role in the global anti-slavery movement

"Since launching our Action Plan Ashurst has partnered with anti-slavery organisations around the world - learning from them, supporting their everyday operations and substantive work through Pro bono and Social Impact projects, and reflecting on ways to drive change through our purchasing power."

Karen Davies, Global Chair

2.  Building our knowledge to inspire change

"When we launched our Modern Slavery Action Plan, we committed to build knowledge internally around every aspect of modern slavery which, I am proud to say, is ongoing through our regular training, pro bono and social impact work. We continue our commitment to build our knowledge in recognition that the more our Ashurst community knows, the more we can raise awareness and inspire our clients, colleagues and other stakeholders to support the eradication of modern slavery."

Paul Jenkins, Global CEO

A key learning from our pro bono practice has been the importance of thinking about how to capture and retain knowledge in each project in ways that allow other Ashurst lawyers to train up and participate in future work. We have also seen the cumulative impact on those projects as lawyers not only build knowledge but then begin to push themselves to learn more and be of assistance in even more complex cases as a result.

We continue to build, capture and share knowledge across Ashurst from a number of different perspectives:

• As an employer of people with skills: ensuring we provide sufficient information and insight to all of the people who work at Ashurst so that they understand why work in this area is important and can identify ways to apply their skills to the modern slavery movement.
• As advisers: every lawyer or business services professional we train up on modern slavery issues becomes a double sided tool - they can support anti-slavery organisations to achieve change through pro bono and non-legal support. They can also apply that knowledge in advising our commercial clients to achieve further change, recognising that modern slavery risks apply to each client in varying ways across the environmental, social and governance spectrum.
• As a business with supply chains and purchasing: our key decision makers must continue pushing beyond basic regulatory compliance in respect of supply chains; and anyone at Ashurst who makes an ad hoc work-related purchase should be provided with enough knowledge to ask the right questions and make the necessary checks about the provenance of those items.
• As individual purchasers: as an employer of over 3,500 people with additional stakeholders well beyond that number, every hour our people spend on learning not only impacts on decisions as a business but also as individuals, with the potential to inform their own purchasing decisions and inspire them to push for change where supply chain concerns emerge.

3.  Moving beyond compliance

"By training everyone at Ashurst to make informed purchasing decisions and comply with our obligations as a firm, we lay the foundation to do more.  Once somebody appreciates the sheer scale of modern slavery and range of ways it can present, they are more inclined to ask: what else can we do to stop this?"

Murielle Marseille, Chief Risk Officer