When it comes to treating women badly, small law firms can be just as bad if not worse than their Biglaw counterparts. Just last week, Above the Law’s  column, Pink Ghetto shared the experiences of several women who were denied bonuses and promotions at the hands of their stingy small law employers. Simply inexcusable.

But are there times when solo and small law firms’ less than generous treatment of new parents can be excused — for example, when it comes to paid maternity leave policies. Currently, the United States is one of just eight countries that don’t require employers to offer paid maternity leave. Instead, employers are free to establish their own policies — which on average provide 15 weeks of paid leave for women and seven weeks for men, according to Above the Law .

I couldn’t find any statistics on solo and small firm parental leave policies, but a quick search on Google revealed wide disparity ranging from no maternity leave policy at all to allowing six weeks unpaid leave to a hybrid set up of time off and flexible working from home. My own personal maternity leave when my daughters were born more than 17 years ago was a week off followed by working from home with a nursing infant on my lap, through naps and after hours when my husband took over. But when my associate became a father for the first time, I provided three weeks of paid paternity leave.

Based on my own experience, it’s tough to fault a tiny firm for failing to provide generous maternity benefits. When an associate goes on paid parental leave, not only is the firm out of pocket for salary, but everyone is working harder to pick up the slack. Alternatively, if the firm is so busy that it needs to hire freelance attorneys to fill the gaps, the firm has to bear the added cost which can be a hardship if the paid maternity leave extends three or four months.

Unpaid maternity leave isn’t as bad for the firm — because it can use the money saved on the absent attorney’s salary to bring on temporary help.  However, unpaid parental leave effectively shifts the cost burden for time away to younger attorneys who may already be saddled with loans and can’t afford to lose six to eight weeks of salary — though some parents who work for companies without paid leave are crowdfunding to make up the slack.

Still, a small firm parental leave policy doesn’t have to be a zero sum game where either the employer is burdened (with the extra cost of a lengthy paid leave policy) or the parent (who bears the cost of unpaid leave). Instead solo and small law firms can split the baby (pun very much intended) when it comes to parental leave. The firm could agree to fund a week or two of paid leave for associates or staff. Thereafter, for parents not ready to return to the office full-time, firms could offer “shift work” — for example, allow a parent on maternity leave to spend the day with their kids but make up the time by working nights or weekends. Maybe not an ideal approach — but until employers and parents (not just moms — dads too!) share responsibility for the unavoidable changes that children bring, we won’t see equality in the workplace anytime soon.

Carolyn Elefant has been blogging about solo and small firm practice at MyShingle.comsince 2002 and operated her firm, the Law Offices of Carolyn Elefant PLLC, even longer than that. She’s also authored a bunch of books on topics like starting a law practice, social media, and 21st century lawyer representation agreements (affiliate links). If you’re really that interested in learning more about Carolyn, just Google her. The Internet never lies, right? You can contact Carolyn by email at elefant@myshingle.comor follow her on Twitter at @carolynelefant.