Any way these charts could be organized by the Y axis and not simply stacked by ranking? As in, I'd like to see it sorted by "None, 6 weeks, 8 weeks," etc. rather than "44%, 23%, 12%," etc. It's a perpetual problem with ATL graphs.

While telecommuting may have lots of things going for it, it isn't the accommodation that a lot of people think.

As the parent of a two-year old, it's really difficult to imagine stringing together more than five or ten consecutive minutes of productivity while attempting to care for a child. In fact, my employer permits parents to telecommute only if they have arranged for another caregiver to care for the child. (I.e., a nanny at home at the same time.) And if you have to have a nanny there anyway, the attractiveness of telecommuting declines.

Maybe it works better for older kids.

Lat, you really need to do something about your list of schools. It's at once arbitrary and biased in favored of the Northeast.

We still need more firms to follow so many of their clients in offering adoption assistance benefits. (All the expensive medical care surrounding pregnancy is covered by insurance. The costs of adoption are not.)

1:54 - quit yer whininggg.

Nobody cares about gays, adopted children, stay at home dads, or working moms. The only family that matters to law firms is a working dad married to a stay at home mom with 1-3 children that share mom and dad's genes. Anything else is just pathetic.

jesus, this board is populated by a bunch of pathetic misogynists who are so obviously threatened by a woman's power to procreate and upper hand in this regard. what a bunch of losers you all sound like.

maybe your mothers should have been working moms instead of having you. remember that next time you hate on a woman. you owe your life to one.

"Also, family friendly policies such as long maternity leave and flex schedules provide significant benefits to society in general. Firms too benefit in many ways."

What a bunch of crap. Reminds me of something James Dobson would say about the "family" being the foundation of society. I don't give a crap if the birth rate goes down, and I fail to see the benefits (aside from keeping people paying into Social Security in the US?) of subsidizing other people's babies.

defenseofwomen,

please return to the kitchen and finish fixing my sandwich

kthnxbi

Lat,

Please do the same for Paternity leave.

2:16, you have a point. I don't think that anyone can argue that maternity/paternity leave is a walk in the park (particularly at the beginning), but it is a perk that discriminates on the basis of the decision to have kids. I think the more that law firms push the free, fully-paid weeks they give to encourage procreation, the more resistance they'll get from the increasingly overworked folks who sacrifice things that bring them fulfillment.

This whole thing is based out of firms' fears that they don't want to appear unfriendly to the "Family," and a genuine concern over how to increase retention for women generally. Interestingly, I'm not sure that it does much for the second point, and it does manage to piss off a bunch of the folks who are slaving away without the firm paying for their outside-of-work fulfillment.

The only fair and reasonabel way for Firms to deal with this would be to provide a certain amount of personal/sabbatical time to all associates across the board, and to encourage flexible schedules so that people can meet their. This way, the decision to have a child (at least one or two) while you're an associate would not change your partnership schedule, and other associates don't get abused by covering for the fertile trentagenarian problem. But the billable hour requirements and compensation need to be strict and fair across the board.

Lat, what's with this list of schools? You list the top schools, but then jump to shit schools like Fordham, Cordozo, and Northeastern. Most of these "graduates" won't have to worry about big firm policies.

2:16, I agree with you wholeheartedly, and I got a chuckle from your fertile trentagenarian comment.

Are you single? Do you like oral from other guys?

1:32, telecommuting shouldn't just be an option for parents. I don't have kids, and I would love to telecommute. I'm more productive at home, and sometimes it's just a pain to come into the office. I have friends who work from home, and they love it.

"Who needs balance? When you really enjoy what you do . . . . there’s your balance.”

2:31

The reason that firms don't do broad-based personal time is because they have little incentive to do so.

As you note, they get positive publicity for being "family friendly" and, in doing so, attact more associates with children or planning to have children. While I don't have the numbers, my hunch is that those associates who are raising a family are far less likely to leave the firm after a couple of years because of more established economic and community commitments. These associates can't afford to go in-house or become an AUSA but also can't go full bore time-wise and rake in cash at a hedge fund. Seems like the preferred associate would thus be the non-primary provider with kids. These initiatives are designed to compete for that cohort. There is little incentive to expand beyond it, regardless of the "fairness" of doing so.

The fact is that law firms have these policies because they need women to work for them and women won't work for them if the firms aren't flexible enough to accomodate other things that are important to women--ie family. If law firms didn't have these policies, their pool of potential workers would drop significantly and they'd have fewer competent billers. It's simple economics.

I'm so glad I worked my butt off in law school to make BigLaw so I could earn the big bucks to support my family only to realize I don't have time to have a family. Good thing I love shoes and new suits.

you need to add a survey about how much it costs to add a dependent to health insurance. some firms (like mine) screw you with crazy monthly payments (i.e. in excess of $500 per month) per dependent.

2:31, you are entirely correct, except that it should be a fertile "trigenarian".

I'm sorry, I've been reading these things for awhile, and I have to be the unfortunate and blind logical one here ...

Law firms need billers. They also need people to develop and bring in business. The only reason they care what color or sex they are is because corporations are instituting quotas of work that they have to give to women and minority lawyers. That's the only reason, money. They have these policies not because they're trying to get the most talented people, or because they can't find competent white men, it's because they have to have a skirt and an african american to put on the webpage so they can accept work from certain clients. They aren't having any trouble finding competent associates to bill time. They never will. That's just something some of us say to make us feel better and more secure. The reality is that while there may be a very small number of people each year that are truly that much better than everyone else ... the difference between #75 at Georgetown and #45 at American probably isn't actually that much. And the latter will happily take the formers job just as quickly as he leaves it.

If they wanted to treat people equally they would. Salary, same benefits, that's it. Why shouldn't women have to give up the same things men do to make it in a big firm. The men may have kids, but they're not fathers, they just happened to be there for the procreation, that's all.

Seriously, whats with the schools, so arbitrary, so biased. Why not just put the top 20 or 30 schools in the current rankings?

2:13 defenseofwomen -- What do you mean by "a woman's power to procreate and upper hand in this regard"?

When was the last time you tried getting pregnant by yourself? I don't think women hold a monopoly on procreation. Remember that next time you hate on a man. You owe your life to one.

I want Rutgers on your polling list. Aren't you from NJ?

I want Rutgers on your polling list. Aren't you from NJ?

8:48 has a good point. Women should be treated the same as men at a law firm. That's why any flextime or reduced hours policies should apply equally. Women who don't have children have the same career killing access to part-time hours that men do.

And, either parent who works full-time at biglaw is just there for procreation. It's funny to hear discussing their kids and believing that they are good dads. Ha! And, no my group does not have any female partners with children. Shocking.

It annoys me to no end that firms have these paid vacation policies. I don't take vacations and I don't see why I should have to pick up the slack for people who do. It's a CHOICE to take a vacation. Why do you expect the firm to subsidize your leisure time? People who would rather go skiing than put time into their job shouldn't whine when it hurts their careers.