The 60 Best Law Firms For Women (2019)

Which firms made the cut for this year’s ranking?

(Image via Getty)

Year in and year out, we watch law firm after law firm pay lip service to their commitment to diversity in the legal profession, with promises to put women attorneys on equal footing with their male counterparts, whether it be through hiring and retaining more women attorneys, promoting more women attorneys to equity partnership ranks, providing more leadership positions to women attorneys, or adopting more family-friendly policies to ensure that women attorneys are able to excel at their jobs while maintaining a stable work/life balance. Despite these continued assurances, and despite the fact that a number of firms have made great efforts to improve women’s stature in the law, there is still much more to be done.

Today, Working Mother released its twelfth annual list of the 60 Best Law Firms for Women. These law firms are considered pioneers in the field when it comes to attracting, retaining, and promoting women lawyers. These law firms not only stand out as being family-friendly workplaces, but they also ensure that women shine in their equity partnership ranks.

With on-campus interview season coming up soon, these law firms are places you might want to work. Which firms made the cut for this year’s ranking?

To earn themselves a spot on the Working Mother Best Law Firms list, self-selected applicant firms with 50 or more lawyers must complete an extensive application (more than 300 questions long) with topics ranging from attorney representation, schedule flexibility, paid time off and parental leaves, and development and retention of women. Working Mother then selected the 60 best firms based on data provided by those firms from the year 2018. According to Meredith Bodgas, editor-in-chief of Working Mother, “It’s heartening to see the progress women lawyers are making at firms committed to fully utilizing these attorneys’ abilities. The war for talent is increasing incentives for law firms to invest in retaining women lawyers, which is why we’re seeing more women’s initiatives and parental-support groups. By highlighting what our top firms are doing, we hope others in the legal community will follow.”

Here are some of the interesting results gleaned from Working Mother’s study:

[T]hese firms offer more extended parental-leave benefits, encourage more lawyers to work remotely and use flexible hours, and are increasingly offering reimbursements for egg freezing and other fertility procedures. A few key parental-leave, work-life balance and career-advancement initiatives taking place at firms featured on the list include:

  • 15 weeks of paid parental leave is the average minimum;
  • One firm on the list, which strives to set reduced schedules that enable both professional growth and work-life balance, reported that attorneys on reduced schedules comprised 33 percent of those promoted to partnerships as of the start of 2019;
  • Several firms offer parent-resource groups, which support moms and dads;
  • Many firms have expanded their women’s initiatives and programs dedicated to the mentoring, sponsorship and promotion of female lawyers, as well as diversity and inclusion programs.

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Women have made great progress at Biglaw firms in recent years, but which firms have been most receptive to their advancement? On average, more than a third of lawyers at these firms are women, while 23 percent of equity partners are women. Here’s the list of the 60 Best Law Firms for Women in 2019:

Arnold & Porter
Baker, Donelson, Bearman, Caldwell & Berkowitz
BakerHostetler
Baker McKenzie
Ballard Spahr
Bass, Berry & Sims
Blank Rome
Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck
Chapman and Cutler
Constangy, Brooks, Smith & Prophete
Cooley
Crowell & Moring
Culhane Meadows
Davis Wright Tremaine
Debevoise & Plimpton
Dechert
Dentons US
DLA Piper
Dorsey & Whitney
Drinker Biddle & Reath
Faegre Baker Daniels
Finnegan, Henderson, Farabow, Garrett & Dunner
Fish & Richardson
Foley & Lardner
Frankfurt Kurnit Klein & Selz
Fredrikson & Byron
Gibbons
Gray Plant Mooty
Hanson Bridgett
Haynes and Boone
Hogan Lovells
Holland & Hart
Jackson Lewis
Katten Muchin Rosenman
Kirkland & Ellis
Latham & Watkins
Littler
Lockridge Grindal Nauen
Lowenstein Sandler
Manatt, Phelps & Phillips
Marshall, Gerstein & Borun
Mintz
Morrison & Foerster
Ogletree, Deakins, Nash, Smoak & Stewart
O’Melveny & Myers
Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe
Perkins Coie
Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman
Quarles & Brady
Reed Smith
Seyfarth Shaw
Sheppard, Mullin, Richter & Hampton
Shook, Hardy & Bacon
Sidley Austin
Squire Patton Boggs
Steptoe & Johnson
Stinson
Waller
Wiley Rein
WilmerHale

For analysis of issues pertaining to women in the Biglaw workforce by the numbers — like percentage of equity partners who are women, percentage of new hires who are women, and whether firms offer formal sponsorship for high-potential women lawyers — click here to see the study’s aggregate data summary.

Congratulations are in order for all of the firms returning to the list this year, as well as the firms that are new to the 2019 list. Way to represent your women attorneys!

Now we’ll turn this discussion over to our readers. If your firm didn’t make the cut, do you think it should have? If your firm did make the cut, was it deserved? What can be done to improve work/life balance for women and working mothers? If you’d like to let us know what you think, you can email us, text us at (646) 820-8477, or tweet us @atlblog. Congratulations to all of the law firms that made this important ranking!

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The 2019 Working Mother 60 Best Law Firms for Women [Working Mother]


Staci ZaretskyStaci Zaretsky is a senior editor at Above the Law, where she’s worked since 2011. She’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email her with any tips, questions, comments, or critiques. You can follow her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.