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Sidley Austin is the latest firm to roll out or enhance a parental leave program, extending time off from 10 weeks to 14 weeks, removing primary and secondary caregiver distinctions and allowing birth mothers to use eight weeks of medical leave to extend their time away to 22 total weeks.

Larry Barden, chair of Sidley’s management committee, said the new policy is intended to attract “the next generation of lawyers.”

“The changes to our parental leave policy reflect the firm’s ongoing commitment to support our lawyers and attract the best talent,” Barden said in an email.

But Sidley is far from the only firm to enhance its leave policy in recent months. Both Reed Smith and K&L Gates, for example, have announced robust improvements to their leave programs in the past few weeks.

The question many are asking now is: Who doesn’t have a leave policy? And what role do these schemes play as firms increasingly turn to generous perks to lure the best talent?

A large chunk, if not the majority, of the nation’s largest firms offer generous parental leave policies ranging from 10 to 22 weeks, according to a list compiled by Chambers Associates. Few firms on the list offer 22 weeks as Sidley does. But several offer up to 20 weeks, including Norton Rose Fulbright, Shearman & Sterling, Weil, Gotshal & Manges and Fox Rothschild.

Other common changes include so-called “Ramp Up/Ramp Down” policies that aim to help attorneys reintegrate into the firm after an extended absence, and gender-neutral parental leave.

“Many firms have room for improvement in attracting and retaining high performing women and high performing female associates and partners,” Zeughauser Group consultant Kent Zimmermann said. “So I think market competitive parental leave policies are increasingly seen as strategically important.”

Caren Ulrich Stacy, CEO of Diversity Lab, an organization that works with law firms to develop novel diversity programs, said that the paradigm has shifted as parental leave policies become standard.

“The firms that went first were seen as family-innovative,” she said. “I think that enough firms have moved to extend their policy that it’s more of an expectation.”

While she is excited that robust parental leave policies are now commonplace because they signal industrywide progress on gender diversity, Ulrich Stacy said that many, especially male, attorneys don’t take full leave often enough for fear that taking time to tend to a newborn will hurt their career advancement.

“To me, that would signal true progress,” she said. “Are the structures and policies and procedures built into the culture so that men and women believe that they can take it and there won’t be consequences for their career?”

Men taking parental leave as much as their women colleagues is an important step to fostering a culture where leave is taken regularly, Ulrich Stacy said. Data from Diversity Lab shows that men and women see family-friendly policies as equally important, and many firms are moving away from bifurcated policies that give less leave to fathers.

“We know that if men take leave or advantage of any of these opportunities it opens the door,” she said.

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