Modern slavery transparency statement

This statement is made pursuant to section 54(1) of the UK Modern Slavery Act 2015. It sets out the steps which Hoffmann Eitle has taken to prevent modern slavery from occurring within its business and its supply chains.

Hoffmann Eitle is an intellectual property law firm. We are an organisation which provides legal advice to global clients through a number of different European offices and legal entities, as detailed in the legal notice on our website.

We are committed to implementing and enforcing policies and procedures to ensure that modern slavery is not taking place anywhere within our business or our supply chains. As an organisation which provides professional services and has relatively short supply chains, we have assessed the risk of modern slavery occurring within our business and supply chains as being low. We strive to ensure that this remains the case. We comply with all relevant employment legislation and have a formal whistleblowing policy which employees have access to.

We expect our suppliers to take all reasonable and practical steps to comply with the Modern Slavery Act 2015. We only use reputable firms and service providers to assist us in meeting our business needs and delivering the very best client service. A review of our suppliers has confirmed that the majority of our supplier relationships continue to be with those who provide office goods and services, such as cleaning, catering, stationery and IT equipment. Based on our review of our suppliers and their published statements, our conclusion is that the risk of modern slavery occurring within our supply chains continues to be very low. Since responsibility for procurement lies with only a small number of people within the business, we currently do not deem it necessary to have a modern slavery training programme for all employees. However, this is something which we will keep under review.  We have prepared a formal modern slavery policy and a supplier code of conduct, which we have started to implement this year.  We also intend to continue developing our procedures so as to ensure that the risk of modern slavery occurring remains very low.

This statement concerns the financial year ending 31 December 2022 and has been signed by the Management Committee of Hoffmann Eitle.