International professional services firm Pinsent Masons has added a new perspective to its strategic decision making with the launch of the Spark Board.

The aim of the Spark Board is to support an inclusive approach to strategic decision-making, ensuring the firm’s main Board benefits from perspectives from outside the elected partnership.

The composition of the Spark Board will ensure that viewpoints from different generations, geographies and job roles are represented when the Board considers different propositions.

Edinburgh-based employment lawyer David Bryden is one of eight Spark Board members who are below the level of Partner, Legal Director or Director of Business Operations. The firm received 130 applications from across its global network of offices with the successful candidates, who work in Birmingham, Leeds, London, Dubai, Melbourne and Paris, appointed for a two year term.

The Spark Board is tasked with considering and presenting its views and solutions on a number of advisory projects as directed by the firm’s global Board, in addition to selecting a number of ‘big picture thinking’ projects of its own choosing and making recommendations to the Board.

David Bryden said: “The Spark Board was born from a recognition that, whether you are a lawyer, a fee earner in another discipline or a specialist in an area of business operations, you can offer a different way of thinking and alternative expertise on the big issues. There is a recognition around our business that no single person or committee has the monopoly on good ideas, and that’s where the Spark Board has a role to play. We can better use, and benefit from, the diversity of all our people.”

Richard Foley, Senior Partner, said: “As we continue to transition our business we know our decision-making needs to be informed by the widest possible range of talents within our business. If we want our business to work better we have to be prepared to push a few boundaries and that includes around key decision making. I am really excited about the contribution the Spark Board will make to that and I’m looking forward to working with the team.”

Pinsent Masons employs 500 lawyers and support staff at its three Scottish offices in Glasgow, Edinburgh and Aberdeen.