"This list is a way to celebrate those firms that have taken important steps toward helping attorneys have both a family and a successful career." - YLW Activism Co-Chair Katie Wilson-Milne
The Top 10 list is a joint project with the Women's Law School Coalition, consisting of the women's groups at Stanford, Harvard, Columbia, Chicago, Boalt (Berkeley), Northwestern, and Virginia law schools. Factors determining ranking included access to and use of maternity/paternity leave politices, emergency and on-site child care, part- and flex-time work schedules, health and other benefits for same- and opposite-sex domestic partners; ratios of women partners and associates; and billable hours requirements. Firms chosen from Vault and data collected from NALP; not all law firms provided information in every category.
For questions about the 2007-2008 Top 10 list, please contact Jill Habig or Katie Wilson-Milne.
Methodology Used to Compile Top Ten Family Friendly Firms List for 2007-2008
Yale Law Women (YLW) gathered data on each of the 157 firms that appear in the Vault Guide to the Top 100 Law Firms and Best of the Rest listings,(1) excluding those that have not completed the National Association for Legal Career Professionals (NALP) Workplace Questionnaire. We then collected data on each firm using the NALP Directory of Legal Employers.(2) Data regarding firms' family-related policies was primarily collected from the NALP Workplace Questionnaire.
YLW evaluated firms based on the following criteria available in the NALP Directory:
Weeks of Maternity Leave
Weeks of Paternity Leave
Whether Attorneys have used Maternity/Paternity Leave in the Last 12 Months
Whether the Leave Policy Covers Same Sex Employees
Existence of Child Care Facility
Existence of Onsite Child Facility
Existence of Written Alternative Work Policy
Compensation of Part-time Attorneys for Exceeding Part-time Hours
Bonus Consideration for Attorneys with Alternative Schedules
Whether Attorney Working Alternative Schedule has Made Partner within Past 5 Years
Percentage of Female Partners
Percentage of Female Associates
Percentage of Part-time Partners
Percentage of Part-time Associates
Average Annual Hours Worked per Associate
Existence of Same Sex Partner Benefits
Existence of Opposite Sex Domestic Partner Benefits
In order to effectively rank law firms based on these criteria, a survey of over 200 Yale Alumni between five and ten years out of law school was conducted, with 71 alumni responding, indicating a response rate of slightly below thirty percent. Individuals were asked to rank the above variables in importance on a scale of one to five, with five indicating most important.
Following the survey's completion, individual responses were standardized, with the standardized responses used to compute weights for each question.(3) Each firm's responses were then summed, with each response being multiplied by its weight in order to produce the firm's total score.(4) Scores were then arranged from highest to lowest, in order to produce an ordered ranking of all firms evaluated.
1 A full list of these firms is available at htttp://www.vault.com.
2 Firms that did not sufficiently complete the NALP Questionnaire were excluded from eligibility for the Top 10 List due to lack of information. We encourage firms that wish to be considered for future lists to complete the Workplace Questionnaire in its entirety.
3 Due to a smaller than expected response rate, some small changes to the weights of each response were instituted ex-post in order to induce higher variation in the weightings.
4 Firms that did not answer questions were counted in the negative, while firms who indicated that cases would be considered individually were counted as the average of those firms who did respond.
Runners Up
(firms ranked 11-30 in alphabetical order)
Bryan Cave LLP - St. Louis, MO*
Dewey Ballantine LLP+ - East Palo Alto, CA *
Duane Morris LLP - Philadelphia, PA
Foley Hoag LLP - Boston, MA
Fulbright & Jaworski LLP - Los Angeles, CA*
Jones Day - New York, NY*
Kirkland & Ellis LLP - New York, NY
Latham & Watkins LLP - New York, NY *
Littler Mendelson PC - San Francisco, CA *
McGuire Woods LLP - Richmond, VA*
Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP - San Francisco, CA*
Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP - New York, NY*
Powell Goldstein LLP - Washington, DC
Schulte Roth & Zabel LLP - New York, NY
Squire, Sanders & Dempsey LLP - Cleveland, OH*
Stoel Rives LLP - Portland, OR*
Sullivan & Cromwell LLP - New York, NY*
Wiley Rein LLP - Washington, DC
Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr LLP - Washington, DC*
Winston & Strawn LLP - New York, NY *
+ Currently merging with LeBoeuf, Lamb, Greene & MacRae LLP.
* Data supplied applies to multiple offices.
The Best of the Rest
(firms ranked 31-50 in alphabetical order)
Cahill Gordon & Reindel LLP - New York, NY
Clifford Chance U.S. LLP - New York, NY
Cooley Godward Kronish LLP - Palo Alto, CA*
Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP - New York, NY
Crowell & Moring LLP - Washington, DC
Davis Wright Tremaine LLP - Seattle, WA
Debevoise & Plimpton LLP - New York, NY*
Dechert LLP - Philadelphia, PA *
Dickstein Shapiro LLP - Washington, DC *
Dorsey & Whitney LLP - Minneapolis, MN *
Goodwin Procter LLP - Boston, MA *
Howrey LLP - San Francisco, CA
Morrison & Foerster LLP - San Francisco, CA *
O'Melveny & Myers LLP - Los Angeles, CA*
Patton Boggs LLP - Washington, DC *
Paul, Hastings, Janofsky & Walker LLP - Los Angeles, CA *
Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP - New York, NY
Reed Smith LLP - San Francisco, CA*
Ropes & Gray LLP - Boston, MA *
Schiff Hardin LLP - Chicago, IL *
*Data supplied applies to multiple offices.