Research

 

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2025 Law Firm Flexibility Benchmarking Survey Accepting Responses through March 21, 2025

The Alliance invites you to participate in our 2025 Law Firm Flexibility Benchmarking Survey, which examines the types of workplace flexibility, hybrid, and leave policies that law firms have implemented for employees and the types of support available for those who work flexibly/hybrid.

Why take the time to complete the survey? Because the data we collect from you and other firms allows us to analyze industry-wide trends and provide valuable insights on workplace flexibility, hybrid work, parental leave, and well-being policies. These are the areas firms are actively seeking guidance on, and your participation helps ensure that the results are as meaningful and actionable as possible.

Why this matters for you:

  • See where your firm stands on flexibility, hybrid work, parental leave, and well-being compared to industry trends.
  • Get exclusive insights from the completed confidential benchmarking report packed with key takeaways and best practices.
  • Be considered for recognition in workplace flexibility and parental leave based on Alliance best practices.

Organizations say one of the most valuable Alliance initiatives is the benchmarking data—it helps firms see where they stand and how they compare to others in the industry. Your input makes that possible. The more firms that participate, the stronger the insights. Let’s work together to build a clearer, more useful picture of what’s working.

Survey responses will be analyzed and aggregated, and responses will be kept confidential. A report will be published for Alliance members and survey participants containing industry trends, best practices and insights learned, which organizations can leverage to make meaningful changes and publicize their successes.

The deadline to participate is March 21, 2025.

Contact Sejal Shah for access to the survey or with any questions.

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Announcing the 2024 Sabbatical & Well-being Poll

Please Complete Our QUICK Sabbatical & Well-being Poll

Our 2024 Sabbatical & Well-being Poll is now open for members and non-members – regardless of industry.

The poll should not take more than 15 minutes!

Members and poll participants will be invited to attend a symposium to discuss best practices around sabbaticals and well-being based on our poll results, research, industry trends, and literature reviews. The poll responses will be analyzed and aggregated, and responses will be kept confidential.

The poll has now closed. Please contact Sejal Shah if you have questions.

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6th Law Firm Flexibility Benchmarking Study Released

The 6th Law Firm Flexibility Benchmarking Study is now available for members and non-member law firms who participated in the survey.

This year’s Study consists of responses from 68 major law firms and examines the availability and accessibility of hybrid work, holistic flexible work, and parental leave.

The 2022 Law Firm Flexibility Benchmarking Study is available to members and non-member participants. Members can access the report in the Member Resource Center.

Further, members can access a recording of the 2022 Flexibility Benchmarking Summit in the Member Resource Center. This event shared trends and best practices in workplace flexibility, hybrid and leave policies implemented at law firms, and the types of support available for those who work flexibly. The Summit included valuable discussions between Manar Morales, Alliance President & CEO, and leaders from firms with innovative policies and practices in the areas of workplace flexibility and caregiver leave:

Please contact Sejal Shah with any questions about this research study.

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2022 Law Firm Flexibility Benchmarking Survey

The Alliance invites you to participate in our 2022 Law Firm Flexibility Benchmarking Survey, which examines the types of workplace flexibility, hybrid and leave policies that law firms have implemented for employees and the types of support available for those who work flexibly/hybrid.

The survey responses will be analyzed and aggregated, and responses will be kept confidential. A report will be published for Alliance members and survey participants containing industry trends, best practices and insights learned, which organizations can leverage to make meaningful changes and publicize their successes.

Survey participants may be considered for publicly-awarded recognitions based upon Alliance best practices in the areas of parental leave and workplace flexibility. Law firm participants eligible for these recognitions will be notified first and publicly honored, with their permission; there will be no ranking associated with these recognitions.

Please complete this survey by Friday, October 21, 2022, in order to be considered for the public recognitions in the areas of parental leave and workplace flexibility, and receive the report on this survey.

Please contact Sejal Shah, Manager of Leadership Initiatives, if you need any assistance or have any questions with the survey.

ACCESS THE SURVEY
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Highlights from our Recent Pulse Poll: Future of Work

As a think tank dedicated to creating work environments centered on inclusion and innovative thought leadership, the Alliance is committed to providing our members with original research on trends and data focused on workplace flexibility, diversity and inclusion.

To this end, we launched two pulse polls during the pandemic to understand trends, successes and challenges related to workplace flexibility during the crisis. Our first poll, Pulse Poll: COVID-19 & Reentry, was released in July 2020 and remains available to our members. Our second poll, Pulse Poll: Future of Work, will be released soon and will provide our members with valuable trends regarding policies, practices and infrastructure organizations plan to offer to support workplace flexibility post-pandemic.

As a sneak peak to the soon-to-be released Pulse Poll: Future of Work, we found that organizations remain committed to making remote work available after the pandemic. Specifically, over 70% plan on creating/updating their remote work policies post-pandemic. Notably, every participant without a remote work policy currently in place plans to create one. Further, we also found that nearly two-thirds of participants plan to make their remote work policies more inclusive by including all employees.

These trends demonstrate the need for all organizations to revisit their flexible work policies post-pandemic and include all employees in these policies. Organizations who do create/update their flexible work policies will fall behind the curve in terms of workplace flexibility which will affect their talent recruitment and retention. Additionally, organizations who just choose to include certain employees in their flexible work policies will face retention/satisfaction issues with employees not offered flexible work, especially considering that many other organizations will be making their flexible work policies more inclusive. In order to include all employees and serve as many employee needs as possible, we strongly suggest adopting holistic flexible work policies (i.e. reduced hours/part-time; telecommuting; flexible start-end times; compressed work week; job sharing; sabbatical offerings) as opposed to just remote work policies. This way, organizations can offer flexibility to all employees, even those who need to be in the office due to their function.

For more information on our research initiatives, please contact Sejal Shah at sejal@dfalliance.com.

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Results of New Partner Report Underscore Need for Increased Focus on Retention and Advancement of Women Attorneys

Washington, DC – December 19, 2018 – Today, the Diversity & Flexibility Alliance released its seventh-annual New Partner Report, which revealed a slight increase in the percentage of women among new partners in 2018 in the U.S. Offices of the nation’s largest and top-grossing law firms. While the results showed a seven-year high of 38.9 percent, it was a mere 0.8 percent increase from last year. An Executive Summary of the report is available here. The complete report is available to Alliance members in the Member Resource Center.

“These results highlight the fact that while many recruiting classes of law school graduates may have 50% women, the percentages drop off dramatically as women advance to Partnership levels,“ said Manar Morales, President and CEO of the Diversity & Flexibility Alliance. “This underscores the need for firms to commit to a more intentional and proactive strategy to retain and advance women. It is essential that firms pay more attention to the diversity of the pipeline of talent at least three years in advance of the partnership track, as well as implement more programs to support the advancement of women along the way,” she added.

The Alliance specifically suggests that firms and other organizations:

– Identify and track gaps in gender diversity at all levels;

– Carefully consider ways to balance the pipeline of talent, at senior levels in particular;

– Implement policies and programs that support the retention and advancement of women;

– Commit to a more intentional strategy for gender diversity throughout the firm;

– Address any weaknesses in their flexibility and parental leave initiatives.

The Diversity & Flexibility Alliance’s New Partner Report is a yearly compilation of data from more than 100 (134 this year) of the nation’s largest and top-grossing law firms examining the gender breakdown of attorneys promoted to partnership in their U.S. offices. The data is based upon publicly available firm announcements and other self-reported sources on new partner classes with an effective date of promotion between October 1, 2017 and September 30, 2018. While these are the most favorable results in seven years, with an increase of almost six percentage points since 2012, the percentage of women among new partners in the U.S. has remained relatively stable.

Alliance member firms included in this report averaged 40.5 percent women in their new partner classes, outpacing the national average by over 1.5 percentage points. Alliance members have access to the entire New Partner Report, as well as opportunities for individualized strategic planning sessions focused on improving their gender diversity outcomes.

The Diversity and Flexibility Alliance is dedicated to helping organizations create inclusive cultures that support the advancement of women, promote diversity and embrace flexible work. The Alliance provides practical research-based solutions that increase organizational effectiveness and create high performance cultures while through diversity and flexibility.

 

Contact Manar Morales at manar@dfalliance.com for more information on the report or for guidance on how your firm can advance and retain more women.

More Women Are Being Promoted to Partner – But There’s Still Work to Be Done

As we release our fifth annual New Partner Report this week we are pleased to see that the percentage of women promoted to partnership in major U.S. law firms is continuing to steadily increase. This year, we found that 37.3 percent of new partners were women, up from 34 percent last year and 33 percent in 2014. We are even more pleased and proud that our member firms are outpacing the national average with 38.3 percent of new partners being women. As the National Association for Legal Placement (NALP) reported in 2015 the total percentage of women partners is 21.46 percent, so these incoming classes are clearly going to increase the overall numbers of women in firm leadership.

While we are optimistic that major law firms might one day have an even balance of men and women in their partnership and leadership ranks, the industry still has a long way to go. Research shows us that there is still some work to be done before firms retain as many women as they do men over the years. Remember, according to NALP, 48 percent of graduating law school students are women and 44.68 percent of law firm associates are women, so we need to understand why these percentages are dropping to 21.46 at the partner level and 37.3 in terms of partner promotions. Read more

Just A Couple More Weeks To Take Advantage of Our Flex Benchmarking Survey

Our Third Annual Law Firm Flexibility Benchmarking Survey will remain open until September 12, 2016 September 27, 2016 (DEADLINE EXTENDED). We strongly encourage all major U.S. law firms, including Alliance members and non-members, to take advantage of this unique opportunity to track the availability, usage, and support for flexible work options.

There is No Downside to Participating

Remember, our survey is unique in the sense that no firms are named (or shamed!) and we will not produce a ranked list. All responses are kept confidential and the final results report will only include aggregate data. We simply want law firms to examine their holistic flexible work usage including reduced hours schedules, telecommuting, flexible start/end times, annualized hours, and job sharing by attorney position, gender, race, and sexual orientation. Our goal is to help improve firms’ flex policies and help to change the culture of flex in the industry as a whole.

Process of Participating Yields Huge Benefits

Many firms find that by participating in our survey, they can take stock of their flexible work options, their employees’ usage, and how they can improve their policies. As we all know, flexible work options are very important to today’s law school graduates and are key to all firms’ recruitment and retention strategies. Read more

How Does Your Flex Policy Stand Up to the Rest of the Industry?

Announcing the Third Annual Law Firm Flexibility Benchmarking Survey

As with any aspect of business, it’s important to track your firm’s progress and know where you stand in the industry when it comes to flexibility. Are you keeping up with your competitors’ flexible work policies?

To help law firms answer this question, the Diversity & Flexibility Alliance created a benchmarking survey two years ago which tracks the availability, usage, and support for flexible work in major law firms in the US. The Third Annual Law Firm Flexibility Benchmarking Survey is now available to law firms in the American Lawyer 200 (AmLaw 200), including Alliance members and non-members. Read more

Benchmarking Data to Support Your Firm’s Flexibility Efforts

Did you miss seeing our 2015 Flexibility Benchmarking Survey Report released two weeks ago?

If so, you may not know that a majority of U.S. law firms in our survey reported having more than one type of flexible work as part of their formal policy. That is, their policies include at least two of the following types of holistic flexibility: reduced hour schedules, telecommuting, flexible start/end times, annualized hours and/or job sharing. Read more