Allan Wernham: Genuine commitment and investment on journey to greater diversity

Creating a genuine culture that fully embraces diversity and inclusion requires an absolute commitment from the highest levels within law firms, as well as investment in both financial and leadership terms, writes CMS Managing Director Allan Wernham.

Allan Wernham of CMS

CMS is on a journey of embracing diversity and inclusion to ensure we not only provide a fair and equal workplace where opportunities are open to all, but also enable good business decisions to be made with the benefit of diverse perspectives.

Like most organisations we still have a lot to do, but we are making progress – women account for 48 per cent of our partners in Scotland.

We are also proud to support people from socially excluded communities to pursue a legal career.

Our Law Scholarships Scheme provides a £2,500 annual award to three high-performing Scottish state school pupils from economically disadvantaged backgrounds while they complete law degrees. They also receive mentoring by a qualified lawyer and paidwork experience with CMS.

Programmes like these play a valuable role in helping promote diversity across key groups, including neurodivergent, disabled and ethnic communities where social mobility is often restricted. They also help our firm discover and develop a new generation of legal talent which can contribute to our success.

Our partnership with Young Enterprise Scotland, which boosts enterprise and financial education in Scottish schools and colleges, sees the firm provide pro bono legal support to their programme, which helps secondary school pupils set up and run their own businesses.

Genuine commitment and appropriate investment can make a difference for underrepresented communities, and also deliver tangible benefits for the legal sector.