Working Mother evaluated the firms, which averaged 661 legal professionals, based totally on the share of ladies fairness companions and girls in leadership, profession-advancement initiatives, and family-pleasant rules.
The mag expanded the listing from 50 companies final 12 months. The companies self-choose to apply and fill out a three hundred-query survey.
This yr the 60 corporations on the listing suggested a median of twenty-two% ladies amongst their fairness companions. That’s up from a mean of 20% in closing 12 months’ Working Mother record—and development over the average of sixteen% in 2007, the primary yr of the survey.
Of the 15 companies with Atlanta offices, digital company Culhane Meadows Haughian & Walsh suggested that 60% of its fairness companions are ladies—the best percent with the aid of far of the 60 corporations on the list. The high percentage is because Culhane Meadows simplest has 5 fairness companions—of whom 3 are girls. It is also the second-smallest firm on the list with the best 62 attorneys.
The percentage of girls equity partners at the opposite 14 corporations in Atlanta ranged from 30% at Constangy and Littler Mendelson to fifteen% at Baker & Hostetler. Ranked with the aid of that percent, they may be as follows:
Constangy, Brooks, Smith & Prophete (30%), Littler (30%), Jackson Lewis (28%), Ballard Spahr (25%), Shook, Hardy & 1st baron Beaverbrook (25%), Squire Patton Boggs (24%), Finnegan, Henderson, Farabow, Garrett & Dunner (23%), DLA Piper (21%), Ogletree, Deakins, Nash, Smoak & Stewart (21%), Seyfarth Shaw (21%), Baker, Donelson, Bearman, Caldwell & Berkowitz (20%), Dentons (19%), Fish & Richardson (17%) and Baker & Hostetler (15%).
Unsurprisingly, the corporations with some of the highest probabilities of women equity partners, Constangy, Littler, and Jackson Lewis, are exertions and employment corporations, which usually have higher proportions of girls attorneys and legal professionals of shade.
Ballard Spahr, a Philadelphia-primarily based preferred exercise company, is still a single-tier partnership, where all companions have equity in the firm.
This yr, the 60 corporations on the Working Mother list suggested a mean of 38% women legal professionals standard and 30% of girls nonequity partners. Last 12 months’ 50 firms additionally averaged 30%, nonequity partners.
While the general percentage of girls’ fairness companions is inching up at a gradual pace, corporations at the list file that they’re selling a better percentage of girls to partner and equity companions.
Constangy mentioned that women made up 60% of their inner accomplice promotions–both equity and nonequity—over the past five years.
At Baker Donelson, the ultimate year’s new shareholder class was more than half of females for the fourth 12 months in a row, the company said, and almost half of the brand new shareholders used its parental leave program.
In their survey submissions to Working Mother, the corporations in Atlanta suggested a spread of efforts to promote the development of ladies’ attorneys. Common topics were increasing the wide variety of ladies in leadership, launching business development packages centered on women, and supplying flex-time and generous parental go away.
DLA Piper stated one of the greater particular initiatives. Its practice group leaders have begun comparing the common billable hours logged through various lawyers versus nondiverse lawyers for the company’s 50 highest sales clients to check for inequities that it may clear up.
While ladies account for on common handiest 30% of company leaders for the 60 companies on the listing, at Constangy, girls make up half of the firm’s practice and office leaders and half its governance committee.
Seyfarth Shaw stated that 1/2 of its newly appointed countrywide department chairs and newly elected executive committee contributors are women in every other sign of development. The office handling partners for its three biggest workplaces, Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York, are also women. (The firm has workplaces in 16 cities.)