pregnancy is NOT is per se disability and every court to address the issue has so held. that is NOT the rationale behind having maternity leave (and no paternity leave). your suggested "rationale" is a proxy for out-dated (and discriminatory) ideas about gender roles and it gets employers into trouble ALL the time.

Nice work 1:44

But...come on. There's more to maternity leave than hanging out with a baby. There's also the rather significant matter of recovering from childbirth. It's not an out-dated idea of gender roles to say that the person who actually bears the child needs a segment of leave that a non-birth parent simply doesn't have a case for. Can we really not have a conversation about child leave that acknowledges the fundamentally different physical requirements for men and women in the context of a new baby? Seriously?

no one gots fried frank info?

2:02, agreed that women are physically affected a hell of a lot more than men -- so I would say the policy should be one week extra for women, or more if their doctor says they need more time to recover. But a policy that gives women significantly more leave than men is encouraging stereotypical gender roles, which is clearly discriminatory.

Also, the Quinn policy must be a joke. 3 days? I know they're batshit crazy, but there's no way that's the actual policy.

jones day ny??

It would be helpful for the table to include how many of the associates actually take 100%, >50%, and <50% of the leave.

Paul Hastings is only 2 weeks.

Until men actually TAKE paternity leave, this chart is useless.

An extra week? That's not the dumbest thing I've heard this week, but it's in the top five. Have you ever met anyone who has had a baby?

In all seriousness, I think there's a problem with a completely blind and dogged assertion that women and men are exactly the same and should have exactly the same everything in every context. So you want x weeks of leave for men, and x+1 for women? It seems like you're saying that after that additional week, women are in the same position as men who choose to be primary caregiver and should get the same leave accordingly. I highly recommend you talk to a new mom, say, three weeks after giving birth. Nevermind a c-section, which requires significant recovery given the incision through the entire abdominal wall. Pregnancy changes a woman's body and blood chemistry. There's a pretty hefty recalibration (if you will) needed before she'll be physically on the same footing has her male neighbor who is staying home with his newborn.

It's okay to note differences in men and women. Structuring policies around that isn't necesarily disciminatory.

Good points, 2:17. I do have to say that I prefer the approach where it is not "maternity" and "paternity" leave, but "primary care giver" and "non primary caregiver" leave. It does smack of discrimination not have any flexibility for different situations because your "paternity" leave is shorter, so the male associates don't have the choice of taking on primary care responsibilities, only females do.

Any guy who takes more than 3 days of paternity leave should be fired.

Three days at Quinn? Really? As a newly-minted father, there's no way I could have gone back to work three days after the birth of our child.

2:33 - How do you determine who is the "primary care giver" and who is the "non primary caregiver?" If my spouse and I work at different firms, can't we each just tell our respective firms that we are the primary caregiver and each get the full leave?

Why not just have "parental leave" of 12 or 18 or however many weeks?

Well, to be fair, they do have the choice of taking on primary care responsibilities - it just costs them more. And really, if we're talking about being a primary caregiver through infancy, then neither policy gives a parent that choice...at least not a paid choice. Suppose I work for a firm that offers me 18 weeks paid leave as a mom. That's 4 months. The babuy will still need 24 hour care at 5 months, 6 months, etc. So I don't really have the paid choice to be a primary caregiver. My choices are to pay a primary caregiver, take an unpaid leave, or quit. Same choices my husband would have if he wanted to be the primary caregiver, with a discrepancy betwen us of a few paid weeks. Maybe it's time people accept that if you want to stay home full-time with your baby for more than a few months, you're not going to get paid for it.

As for the semantics, well, that's a bee that just doesn't enter my bonnet. But suit yourself.

So, who verifies that a person is the "primary care giver" assuming both parents don't work at the same firm?

Cooley, tsk tsk. The measly 2 weeks is cut down to only one week if it's in the first year of employment? Talk about stingy. Don't get your wife preggers til you've been at Cooley for at least 3 months!

I agree that men need to start TAKING their full paternity leave. Everyone knows they won't be truly *off duty* from work the whole time. As long as men can work from home in a genuine emergency during their paternity leave, they should take the entire time off. Rushing back to work after a week sends the wrong message to everyone -- your firm, your wife, your newborn, and yourself. Hey, you need the time with your little one, too, and the new mom needs your extra hands. Win-win.

To really be "equal", let's give everyone the right to take two 6 (8, 10, 12, whatever) week terms of paid leave during their working life and if people want to take those to have and bond with their children, so be it...if people want to take those to work at a dude ranch or hike the Appalachian Trail or travel abroad, so be it.

2:45 - it's a toughie, for sure. My husband is also an attorney, and though his firm just announced 12 weeks for fathers, all of the married guys concurred on "let me see someone else take more than 2-3 weeks, then I'll try it." The threat of being blackballed in your practice group for having taken significant time off is huge, for both men and women. I think this is yet another reason to wait, wait, wait to have kids until you've been at a firm for at least 5 years. A parent (male or female) who takes extended leave early on just doesn't look very committed - and are demonstrably less invested in staying at the firm than someone who has put in some serious years/hours and has built up some good-will capital with the partners.

Plan the birth of the child to be around Sept/Oct, take the full amount time off, then lateral to another firm.

Even better, husband and wife take full leave as primary caregivers, then lateral to each others firm!

my post wasn't about gender politics; it was a statement of the law. pregnancy is not a disability, period. now, if you want to talk about having policies that recognize the biological fact that women can be rendered "disabled" due to child birth, fine. I am more than willing to concede that the second wave of feminism (i.e., men and women are different after all and treating women like men does not = equality) has it right. but our anti-discrimination laws, by historical happenstance, are based on first wave of feminism (i.e., early 1960s) thinking. as such, those laws insist that men and women be treated alike. so what does a smart, well-advised employer do? it offers men and women equal amounts of paid maternity/paternity time (fairly generous) and additional unpaid leave if they want it (really generous). the families then decide what gender roles they want to assume and they behave accordingly. same for adoptions. employers get in trouble when they assume that women, in addition to having babies, will inevitably do the lion's share of caregiving and then set their (inevitably discriminatory) policies in accordance with that assumption. just set a flat period of paid and/or unpaid leave and allow who ever wants it to take it. and i don;t want to hear any neo-con bitching about this being a free ride for men who will sit around and smoke stork cigars on the doll--the wives of those men should kick them in the ass and make them change diapers--that's a family issue, not a legal one.

If having taken paternity leave would be held against you, then it's probably time to re-examine where you are working.

Although most guys here only take around 4 of the 12 weeks (all the women take 12), that seems to be driven by not wanting to sit home with the baby as opposed to any perceived fear of retribution. I've asked several partners point blank about it, and not only did they sound genuinely surprised at the idea that it might be held against someone, but they encouraged me to take as much as I could.

Leave should be treated similarly to working out of the office -- be responsible about it. If you have a trial coming up, and you are the only associate on it, then, no, taking paternity leave during that time would be ill advised. But if your caseload can be managed so that you can be out of the office for three months, then you should take the three months.

2:52's point about fear of being blackballed is a legitimate one, even where the firm simply provides "parental leave" without regard to the associate's sex. in my experience, men tend to make more of this "blackballing" then is warranted. i know of a few make associates in my firm who've taken the full 12 weeks with no adverse effects.

Fulbright & Jaworski zero? WTF?

Fulbright & Jaworski zero? WTF?

Fulbright & Jaworski zero? WTF?

Whose case load can stand even 4 weeks off? If you're busy, you're too busy. If you're not busy, you're too paranoid to let slip the few matters you've retained and to let opportunities to get more work pass by. Also, you're basically forgoing your bonus for that year by taking the time off, right?

Unfair? Where does it cross the line? If an associate wants to take five years off to give birth and raise the child to school age, he/she shouldn't get paid and equal opportunity for advancement as his/her peers that did not. So, is taking off 1/3 of a year any different in principle or just in degrees?

Having had two babies I have to laugh at the person who says that pregnancy/childbirth is not a disability. As a pregnant person I was EXHAUSTED all the time from the physical efforts of hauling around a giant baby as well as actually creating that baby. Coming in to the actual birth, Mom is already exhausted.

After giving birth (naturally), while I wasn't in a lot of pain or anything, I needed time off because of breastfeeding as well as the bonding reasons. Breastfeeding is a LOT of work and exhausting - baby eats every 2-3 hours around the clock and that is Mom's full responsibility. It is tiring and frustrating. Contrary to what you might believe, breastfeeding does not come naturally to mother or baby and it requries perseverence and commitment to establish a successful breastfeeding relationship. A woman who comes back to work and wants to breastfeed must pump, which is a serious time commitment and physically demanding. Men need bonding time with a baby, but childbirth and a new baby are far more taxing on the mother compared to the father.

Fathers should get paternity leaves, but mothers need them to physically recover from pregnancy and childbirth as well as to establish the breastfeeding relationship.

3:32
i appreciate the story and your plight. as i explained in a subsequent post, however, our anti-discrimination laws do not; they require your employer to treat you and your husband the same. it truly is a great irony of the feminist movement--by achieving "equality" what you got was equal treatment for different situations. blame betty, not me.

I'm a new first time dad, as of a few weeks ago. I ended up taking about 7 days, although our firm has no set policy. I'll just have to make up the hours some weekend this summer when my kid goes to the beach for the first time - or maybe over her first birthday party. Whatever. My role is bring home the money so my wife can stay home and be a mom and so my little girl will have nice clothes to wear, a nice car to drive and the ability to granduate debt free. We all have roles in life. Get over it.

"I was EXHAUSTED all the time from . . . creating that baby"

That's hot!

It wasn't too long ago that a real woman would be out working in the fields, take a 5 minute break to squeeze out the baby, and then get right back to work. Women today are soft.

4:00

Yeah, and then they died at age 38. No thanks.

12 weeks for paternity leave sounds great, but when has anyone actually taken that much? When has anyone taken more than 2 weeks of paternity leave?

The flipside is when you're interviewing as a 25 to 35 year old female without kids and the interviewer is thinking (and sometimes stupidly says) that you're just going to get pregnant and be out-of-service for a period of time on the firm's nickle and then wholly unreliable for the first year thereafter and then take more sick time than your male peers and all other things equal, he'd better hire the man instead of you. The more time women require off and complain about being unable to do the job because of pregnancy and child-rearing, the more prevalent that sentiment becomes.

What is Latham's paternity timeline? Anyone?

Does Akin Gump have paternity leave?

in re 4:19 --

How would they have any idea if you have kids or not? Maybe I'm a 24 yo with quads or trips...

Latham just announced 12 wks paternity.

@4:19 - of what point is that the flipside? And how is it germane here?

Those of you in BIGLAW who would pass up the chance to spend compensated time with a newborn because you're concerned about how you'll be perceived for it are fools. You're a cog - enjoy that while you can. The firm could merge. Or go under. Or flat-out decide not to make you partner for no good reason. Or fire you for a bad review. It's not as if working doggedly at a firm for five years(!) before having children gives you any guarantee whatsoever. Take the leave and if it's frowned upon take your wares elsewhere. It's not indentured servitude, for Christ's sake.

And 4:19: For many employers (not all), that conduct is flat-out against the law. They engage in it at their own peril.

Do any firms actually give the attorneys credit for hours during this time? Seems to me like vacation time if not. If you don't meet billables because you took 12 weeks off, do you still get a bonus?

If not, this chart is useless whether people actually take the time of not.

FYI, at my firm, you are credited 40 hours of billable time per week for up to 6 weeks. And yes, everyone takes all 6 weeks and this place is a baby factory. Profits would go up 25% just by eliminating this. Hell, people have babies when they need a break!

"Hell, people have babies when they need a break!"

Then they are fools.

Leave without pro-rated hours is essentially no leave at all.

Yeah...4:19 is full of it with that interview scenario. Unless an interview candidate brings it up, you can't ask them about their family status; the interviewer wouldn't know whether the 25-35 y/o woman is without kids or not.

I cannot believe Quinn Emanuel only gives 3 days. Though, given they don't even mention it on their website, it's probably true. A 3 day policy shows they are not willing to compete with other biglaw firms.

Paternity leave should match maternity leave, or women will always be pigeon holded into the role of primary care giver. Some more advanced European society have made this law.

5:35 - thank you.

"Some more advanced European society have made this law"

Oh my, let's not drag Europe into this. Law-based parent leave policies in Europe make it really, really hard for women to get professional jobs. Who wants to hire a woman if they have to pay her a *year* of leave? The government has no place in this discussion.

Some firms have leave for adoptive parents, right? And if you're the primary caregiver, you get more time off. It would make sense for the same policy to appy to all parents, and give an extra 4 wks or so to moms who give birth in order to recover from the physical effects.

skadden = 4 weeks.

what confuses me is is this in addition to regular 4 weeks of vacation? if so, can ANYONE get away with taking vacation and paternity leave? im bettin not.

which means paternity leave is just the right to have your vaca in one big lump, because i cant see how anyone will be able to take a full two months off from work and not piss off the partners/ruin their bonus entirely.

2:14 is right. Paul Hastings only has 2 weeks, unless they just changed it over the past month or so.

Who the hell is Justin Bernold??

These firms are ridiculous if this is their commitment to retaining non-lesbian/sociopath women.

How can someone be the primary care-giver and be working in biglaw? What in the world could their spouse be doing that would take more time away from the kids than their biglaw job?

Also...are you people seriously kidding w/ all this discrimination stuff? Apparently I'm the only one here who lives in a place called the real world that recognizes that women give birth and men don't and in 90%+ of households women are the primary caregivers of children.

The last time I checked, men didn't breastfeed.

As it is, it's recommended that you breastfeed for a year, and even 12 weeks of paid leave, which is generous, doesn't allow for that. Sure, you can pump, but as someone else pointed out, that's not so simple (or quick). So besides just being there to actually take care of a baby, a woman who breastfeeds also kind of needs to physically be there for food. You can argue all day long about gender stereotypes, but if you want your children to be breastfed, mama needs to be there in some form or another. There's not really a market for wetnurses these days.

Again, skadden = 4 weeks. You should update the list to reflect that. Thanks.

Hey, Thursday, May 22-

Ever seen "Meet the Parents"? Men _can_ breastfeed, it just takes some ingenuity, and some injection-molding. ;)