“As businesses, law firms need to implement processes and practices to ensure respect for human rights”, 17 Sep 2015

There growing appetite among law firms for support on practical implications of what it means as business to respect human rights…The announcement from FIFA earlier this summer, that future World Cup bids will have to meet the provisions of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, is ground-breaking.  In particular, the new FIFA requirement that all contractual partners and those within the supply chains will have to comply with the provisions has wide ranging implications for businesses large and small across the world as well as for the legal counsel that represent them…Our ambition is to extend the knowledge, and practice, of the legal profession in this vital area.  As the guardians of the rule of law, the international legal profession has an obligation…to ensure that law firms as businesses themselves operate under the highest of standards…[The goal of the Law Society] is to ensure that solicitors in England and Wales understand the practical implications of what it means to respect human rights in their practice and that they take active steps to implement these.