Grant Williamson Featured in Law.com Q&A on Bradley’s Best Diversity Initiative Award

Bradley attorney Grant Williamson was featured in a Law.com Q&A on the firm’s Best Diversity Initiative Award in the Daily Report’s 2025 Southeastern Legal Awards. The firm was honored for its work in Tennessee with the Knoxville Bar Association's Barristers Diversity Committee, and Williamson discussed his involvement with the committee.

Law.com: What are the most important developments in the area of diversity and inclusion?

Williamson: When the Knoxville Bar Association (KBA) Barristers Diversity Committee began to think about its goals for 2022, the committee began by considering how it could promote an environment that was welcoming to diverse students at both of Knoxville’s law schools so that more students would consider remaining in Knoxville to practice after graduating. The thinking was that by fostering a welcoming environment that encouraged law students to get involved and connected with the KBA while still in law school, the Barristers Diversity Committee could foster a larger community of diverse attorneys that would further encourage more diverse, young attorneys to remain in Knoxville after graduation—effectively creating a more diverse and inclusive bar overall.

Especially in the last few years, the KBA has seen fewer diverse attorneys join its ranks as Knoxville law school graduates have increasingly moved to Nashville, Charlotte, Atlanta, and other cities after finishing law school. In the past, diverse students had relayed to the Barristers Diversity Committee that it was difficult to make connections with members of the KBA, which made diverse students more likely to seek out other cities when deciding where to begin their practice.

Law.com: What do you see as the greatest inclusion-related challenges today for lawyers and firms in the Southeast?

Williamson: In order to start identifying ways to better serve as a liaison between the KBA and the law schools, the Barristers Diversity Committee reached out to students at Knoxville’s law schools. Through conversations with the leaders of diverse student organizations at Lincoln Memorial University’s Duncan School of Law and at the University of Tennessee College of Law on how to foster relationships and further diversity and inclusion efforts between the KBA and law students, the committee learned of a different side of the same issue. While the KBA is experiencing a decrease in diverse attorneys becoming members of the bar, the student leaders have also noted a decrease in diverse student enrollment and lower student participation in diverse student organizations at the law schools in Knoxville.

Students were offering up their own homes and apartments to law school applicants who wanted to visit the law schools in Knoxville in an effort to try to make the financial burden of visiting just a little bit lighter. In this way, the student leaders hoped they could allow a greater number of diverse students to be able to visit and experience all that Knoxville and its law schools have to offer.

Law.com: How are successful diversity initiatives influencing the future of the legal field?

Williamson: In order to target the issue of the lack of diversity in the KBA at its root, the Barristers Diversity Committee determined that it was imperative to get involved with diversity efforts at the law schools in Knoxville—without a diverse group of law students in town, a diverse and inclusive KBA is not possible. By creating a scholarship fund for students of diverse backgrounds who are interested in attending law school in Knoxville, the Barristers Diversity Committee hoped to remove a hindrance to its goal of creating a more diverse and inclusive bar by making it easier for future attorneys to experience Knoxville, its law schools and its local bar.

The original article, “Diversity Initiative Finalist: Grant Williamson, Bradley Arant Boult Cummings,” first appeared in Law.com on April 29, 2025.