Baker Donelson was named today to the prestigious list of "Best Law Firms for Women" by Seramount, now part of EAB. This is the sixth consecutive year the Firm achieved this recognition, which honors the top 50 firms that utilize best practices in recruiting, retaining, promoting and developing women lawyers.
Highlights from this year's list, which is available here, include a significant increase in the percentage of women managing partners; more multicultural women at every level; and increased competition in hiring and retention, with law firms stepping up their family-friendly benefits.
Christy Tosh Crider, chair of Baker Donelson's Women's Initiative and chair of the Firm's Health Care Litigation Group, said, "Baker Donelson is steadfast in our long-standing commitment to achieve complete gender parity at every level of leadership and shareholder status. We understand that diverse teams outperform those without diversity of thought. Our clients demand it and the success of our firm depends on it. Firms must retain and advance women to maintain this critical part of our talent pool. We are so proud of being named a Best Law Firm for Women for six consecutive years, but there is no time to rest after celebrating. We must keep up the rewarding work of ensuring that every talented attorney is brought along."
Through its Women's Initiative, Baker Donelson has implemented numerous key initiatives designed to create an environment where female attorneys thrive, including an industry-leading parental leave policy, a Firm-wide mentoring program for women, a program that awards business development grants to women attorneys, and a training program designed to help women attorneys achieve equity shareholder status. Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, Baker Donelson has implemented a series of wellness initiatives with a particular focus on working parents, including a childcare education credit policy that allows both billable hour credit and working attorney credit for child education efforts.
"Our Best Law Firms for Women continue to improve in many critical areas," said Subha V. Barry, president of Seramount. "Representation of women managing partners has increased significantly and we've seen progress for multicultural women lawyers at every level. Our firms recognize the importance of recruiting and retaining this important talent pool and have developed the family-friendly benefits to prove it. All of these combined are important steps toward parity."
About the Methodology
Seramount's 2022 Best Law Firms for Women application includes more than 300 questions about attorney demographics at different levels, flexibility, paid time off and parental leaves, and development and retention of women. Questions also include ability to work from home some of the time, family-friendly benefits, and mentoring and sponsorship participation.