BBC Radio Wales, 13th December 2011
Our Sarah Wyburn was featured on the Jamie Owen & Louise Elliott show on BBC Radio Wales this week.
Sarah appeared on the show to talk about the firm’s groundbreaking involvement in Stonewall Cymru’s Diversity Champions programme.
Jamie and Louise spoke to Stonewall’s Dean Lloyd about the programme. We were the first law firm in Wales to partner with Stonewall, and Sarah was invited to talk about why the firm joined the scheme.
Sarah commented as follows: “We’ve always been a forward-thinking firm, and we’ve liked to believe that we’re a forward thinking firm, and the nature of our work was changing over the years. 10-11 years ago, when I started working at the practice, you found that it was very much more straightforward divorce, if there is such a thing.
“Increasingly over the years, the issues have become more diverse, and I found myself particularly dealing with a lot more civil partnership cases, issues involving gay and lesbian clients, and it seemed to us that we needed to make that sure we were adopting the right ethos to deal with all of those matters.
“We were always hopeful that we were doing the right things anyway, but it’s led us to constantly think as we’re dealing with staff, as we’re dealing with clients, of all the things that we may need to put in place for each individual person, each individual client.
“It does send out that message that we want to be inclusive, and as far as we are concerned, there is no difference in service, there is no prejudice, we are an equal opportunities practice, and I think just by sending that message out there to the gay community, that says that we want to be involved, it says we want to support them, it says we don’t differentiate.
“So I think from our point of view, it’s about sending that message across the board, to all sectors of society – whether that’s the legal profession, society in general, straight clients, gay clients – there’s no difference as far as we’re concerned.”