A founding member of the Edinburgh Foundation for Women in Law, Karina has encouraged our industry to take practical steps to promote women into positions of seniority.  I was therefore really pleased that our former chair, Linda Urquhart, was also one of Karina's guests and that Karina described Morton Fraser as a firm that "walked the walk, not just talked the talk".

Whilst we still have much work to do to ensure senior women continue to be enabled into senior roles in law and to balance the gender pay gap in the industry, I'm really proud to be part of a firm which has 60% women at senior level and a 50/50 board. I'm even prouder that the 50/50 board is not as a result of positive discrimination but because our partners are "gender blind" and recognise and reward hard work and talent.

Our flexible working policies certainly help. Agile and part time working patterns for all, including equity partners, are for us, "no brainers", and help us attract and retain the best talent - male and female.

The lessons we've learned over the first 100 years should be put to good use in ensuring our industry becomes more inclusive more generally. Whilst I still occasionally walk into external meetings made up entirely of white middle class men, those days are thankfully becoming a thing of the past. If the last 100 years have taught us anything, it is that diversity of talent, background, skills and experience promotes innovation and creativity and generally gets us to the right answer!