Legal Marketing & PR

Top 10 Family-Friendly Law Firms

By Larry Bodine

What a great marketing distinction to have: your firm is family-friendly. This means that your law is not a golden sweatshop where attorneys are pressured to bill hours and generate big invoices for clients.  It also demonstrates that the firm is not run by sharks, but is instead managed by humane lawyers who respect that people have real lives outside the office.

Yale Law Women announced the Top Ten Family Friendly Firms of 2010. In alphabetical order, they are:

1. Arnold & Porter
2. Debevoise & Plimpton
3. Dorsey & Whitney
4. Kirkland & Ellis
5. Mayer Brown
6. Mintz, Levin, Cohn, Ferris, Glovsky & Popeo P.C.
7. Perkins Coie
8. Sidley Austin
9. Steptoe & Johnson
10. Wilmerhale

In its fifth annual survey of the Vault Top 100 Firms, YLW found that many firms have already embraced more flexible career paths. 

• 24% percent of firms who responded to our survey offer formal 'off-ramp / on-ramp programs,' which allow attorneys to leave the firm for a number of years to pursue other types of legal practice or to take time off to spend with their families.
• Some firms have created child care facilities and Work-Family Balance Groups to discuss issues concerning work-life balance.
• Firms have organized formal and informal mentoring relationships to support attorneys to stay long-term and advance within the firm.

Flexible and part-time work options are also becoming the norm: 100% of part-time requests were granted on average at responding firms, and 100% of them automatically grant part-time requests if conditions in a written policy are met. On average, 6.3% of attorneys at these firms were working part-time in 2009.

YLW found that, on average, 44.8% of associates at responding law firms are women, women make up only 19.4% of partners and 18.9% of executive or management committee members. Additionally, women made up just 28% of the partners newly promoted in 2009, on average. 

Interestingly, six firms identified last year are no longer on the list:

1. Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton
2. Covington & Burling
3. Jenner & Block
4. Katten Muchin Rosenman
5. Munger, Tolles & Olson
6. Patton Boggs

'YLW remains concerned about the low rate of retention of women, the dearth of women in leadership positions, the gender gap in those who take advantage of family-friendly policies, and the possibility that working part-time can derail an otherwise successful career,' a YLW announcement says.

Full post as published by Larry Bodine's LawMarketing Blog on May 12, 2010 (boomark / email).