Ethics, professional conduct and compliance

Our Code of Conduct sets out the general rules and professional standards that all members of the firm must follow.

Everyone at Uría Menéndez must comply with the following internal policies:

• Anti-corruption
• Prevention of money laundering and financing of terrorism
• Criminal compliance
• Confidentiality, data protection and cybersecurity
• Conflicts of interest

The firm’s standards of practice are entirely incompatible with conduct that could compromise the objectivity of those we interact with in our professional activities, be they in the public sector (domestic and foreign civil servants) or the private sector (e.g. clients, suppliers, other legal professionals).

All members of the firm must comply with UM’s “know your client” policy and the regulations on the prevention of money laundering and financing of terrorism.

The firm has measures in place to ascertain the identity and profession or business activity of a client and, if applicable, the identity of its ultimate controlling person(s) and ownership structure before working on a matter. It also has a specialist team that processes and analyses this information.

We are committed to complying with our professional, ethical and legal obligations. We have a specialist team that supervises compliance with our Criminal Risk Prevention rules, which include principles and procedures to enable early detection and reduce the risk of crimes being committed.

We have rules on confidentiality, personal data protection and cybersecurity to ensure that everyone at the firm keeps client information and any information we become a party to through our work confidential. Our specialist compliance team and data protection officer oversee compliance with these rules.

Identifying and avoiding conflicts of interest is one of the ethical duties of the legal profession. We have robust standards of practice and advanced systems in place to detect conflicts of interest to ensure that we do not accept matters that are or might be contrary to our clients’ interests.

We are committed to providing services of the highest standard and our suppliers play a vital role in safeguarding our values and principles. Our Supplier Code of Conduct sets out the minimum standards that suppliers are expected to meet throughout their relationship with the firm.