5 Ways Our Benchmarking Survey Benefits Your Firm

Today we are launching our 4^th Annual Law Firm Flexibility Benchmarking Survey and we are hopeful a significant number of AmLaw 200 firms will participate. Our survey serves as a unique opportunity for law firms to gain valuable information and insights into the effectiveness of their flexible work policies, the biases that may be present and how they compare to the rest of the industry. Our goal is to help improve individual firm’s flex policies and help to change the culture of the industry as a whole.

Five ways you’ll benefit from participating in our Benchmarking Survey:

1. An Opportunity for Self-Assessment

By completing the survey, you will, in essence, be performing a self-assessment of your firm’s flexibility policy. The questions on the survey were designed to determine holistic flexible work usage (including reduced hours, telecommuting, flexible start/end times, annualized hours and job sharing) by attorney or staff member position, gender, race and sexual orientation. By evaluating your firm’s answers you’ll have a glimpse into the successes as well as the gaps in your policy and its usage.

2. It’s a Small Investment of Time for Large Benefits

This year’s survey has been streamlined and modified to reduce the number of questions related to usage data and attrition. The policy-related questions focus on information that is readily available to most flexibility program managers. It is our hope that those completing the survey will be able to do so in a shorter amount of time thereby making it well worth the effort for the critical data gained.

3. Confidentiality is Guaranteed

Our survey is unique in the fact that all responses are kept confidential and the final results report will only include aggregate data. No firms are named or shamed and we don’t produce a ranked list. This is a unique opportunity to share your data in a confidential manner and learn the trends of the industry.

4. It’s an Opportunity to Be A Part of the Solution

Participation in this survey helps to change the culture of the legal field and to open the dialogue to de-stigmatize, de-parent and de-gender flexible work and related policies and practices. Make sure that your firm is part of the solution and helps the industry evolve to meet the flexibility needs of current and future attorneys and staff.

5. You will Receive Expert Advice and Guidance

All firms who participate will receive the full 2017 Law Firm Benchmarking Survey Report, featuring findings from the aggregate survey results. Only the Executive Summary will be available to the general public. Additionally, firms can request a custom report with individualized recommendations from the Diversity & Flexibility Alliance.

We encourage all of our member law firms, as well as non-members, to complete this short survey and take advantage of a unique opportunity to track your firm’s flexibility policy and usage and compare your results to others.  Alliance members should visit our Member Resource Center to access the survey and non-members can contact Denise Robinson at denise@dfalliance.com for information on how to participate.

The survey will remain open until September 22, 2017. For more information, please contact Denise Robinson, Director of Research, at denise@dfalliance.com.