Only five law firms made the Top 100 Companies as ranked by Working Mother for 2019, and Dechert was one of them.

The firm was joined on the list by Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer; Finnegan, Henderson, Farabow, Garrett & Dunner; Katten Muchin Rosenman; and Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman.

In a press release, Alison Bernard, Dechert's chief talent and human resources officer, called the designation "a great honor."

"We are committed to supporting working parents and creating equal opportunities for everyone," Bernard said.

The release also noted that Ella-Marie Smith, a Charlotte-based finance associate at Dechert, was recognized as a "Working Mother of the Year."

This was not the first time on the Top 100 Companies list for any of the firms. Arnold & Porter has been included at least 15 times.

The top 10 companies, according to a Tuesday press release, were AbbVie, Astellas Pharma U.S., Bain & Co., Deloitte, Ernst & Young LLP, IBM, Johnson & Johnson, KPMG, Takeda and Unilever.

Professional services and pharmaceuticals companies dominated the upper reaches of the list. The Big Four accounting firms, which have been increasingly in competition with Big Law in recently years, all made the rankings, and three of the accounting giants made the top 10.

No law firms in the top quarter of the Am Law 100 made the list. By revenue ranking, Am Law No. 36 Dechert was the highest-ranking law firm to make Working Mother's list. The law firms included by Working Mother were among the smallest companies on the list by number of employees.

In a release, Working Mother stated that its methodology for the rankings takes into consideration "400 questions on leave policies, workforce representation, benefits, childcare, advancement programs, flexibility policies and more."

"Parents are speaking out more than ever before about what they need in order to succeed at work and at home, and employers are paying attention," said Meredith Bodgas, editor-in-chief of Working Mother, in a statement. "By implementing family-friendly policies such as flexible schedules, paid parental leave, post-leave phase-back periods and mentoring programs, our 100 Best Companies are taking the needs of their employees into consideration in order to create a supportive, inclusive and productive environment."

Highlights of the magazine's findings include:

  • The average number of fully paid weeks of maternity leave for listed companies was 11 weeks, compared with an average of four weeks nationally (according to the Society for Human Resource Management).
  • Fifty-seven percent of companies on the list offer the same number of weeks for maternity and paternity leave.
  • Thirty-one percent of women employees participate in a leadership-development program; 33% of their women employees participate in one-on-one formal mentoring.
  • Ninety-eight percent offer flextime, with 79% of employees using it; 99% offer telecommuting, with 54% of women employees taking advantage of it.
  • Seventy-five percent offer sick-child care, and 94% have backup/emergency childcare.
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