BigLaw firms offer parental leave coaching to support lawyer parents, boost engagement
When Lindsay Aggarwal returned to work after the birth of her daughter in December 2022, she didn’t think it would take long to get back on track.
Aggarwal, a partner at Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner in St. Louis, had taken parental leave after her son was born a couple of years earlier. Then, even amid the COVID-19 pandemic, she adjusted to her new normal relatively quickly.
But this time felt different.
“My mental health just kept deteriorating, but I think as a profession, we’re used to this idea of, ‘I can get through this, I can handle this,’” Aggarwal says. “So I brushed aside a lot of warning signs that something was wrong.”
By September 2023, Aggarwal realized she needed to take an extended leave of absence because of postpartum depression. She focused on improving her mental health through therapy and medication. She also reflected on her experience and felt called to use what she learned to support colleagues in similar situations.
“I felt like BigLaw—and, honestly, corporate America—were not structured in a way to set up parents, and moms in particular, for success, and that we were making it a lot harder than we needed to be,” Aggarwal says.
Aggarwal approached Bryan Cave with her idea for a parental leave coaching program. As part of the program, she planned to provide confidential one-on-one coaching to any attorney preparing for, returning from or on parental leave. Ahead of the leave, she would help them navigate conversations with supervisors and clients about their time off and create a workload transition plan. She also would help them outline what they wanted their leave to look like and how they could reintegrate into their work and the firm when they returned.
Just as important, Aggarwal wanted to support her colleagues as they “grappled with their new reality,” she says. She would help them decide how to approach all their new obligations and provide a safe space where they could talk about challenges and ask questions.
Bryan Cave was immediately supportive, Aggarwal says. She returned to work in February 2024 and helped launch the program three months later. She still spends half of her time practicing securities litigation but now has worked with more than 100 fellow lawyer-parents.
“During that summer when I was struggling, I didn’t feel like there was anybody I could talk to because I just felt like that would be admitting that I was failing,” Aggarwal says. “But because of this program, I hope no one else at the firm feels that way.”
Lindsay Aggarwal. (Photo courtesy of Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner)
Growing support
The focus on challenges facing practicing parents has increased across the legal profession in recent years.
According to Legal Careers of Parents and Child Caregivers: Results and Best Practices From a National Study of the Legal Profession, a seminal report published by the ABA Commission on Women in the Profession in 2023, 48% of mothers and 21% of fathers said they felt that having children had a negative impact on their legal career.
Among the report’s other findings, 60% of mothers and 25% of fathers in law firms noted feeling that they were perceived as less committed to their careers. Additionally, 61% of mothers and 26% of fathers in firms experienced demeaning comments about being a working parent.
Sandra Bang, the founder and CEO of the Sable Group, a New York City-based executive coaching and consulting firm, has in the past decade seen more firms try to meet the needs of their lawyer-parents by offering parental leave coaching.
“I have worked with folks who are about to go out on leave, and they really appreciate their institutions providing this additional support, especially if they are going out on leave for the first time,” Bang says.
Bang was previously the chief diversity and talent strategy officer at Shearman & Sterling, which merged with London-based Allen & Overy to create A&O Shearman a few years after she left in 2021. On request, she helped find coaches who could support lawyers who went on leave, including parental leave. From her perspective, this kind of support not only benefits lawyers but firms and their clients.
“It goes such a long way with retaining both moms and dads in the profession, and it’s a really important and, frankly, relatively easy thing to do,” Bang says.
Morgan, Lewis & Bockius is another BigLaw firm that offers support to its lawyer-parents. As part of its holistic coaching program for associates, the firm provides mentorship and resources around how to transition back to work and balance new personal and professional priorities, says Lani Walser, its chief legal talent officer.
For the past seven years, the coaching team at Morgan Lewis has guided returning associates through reintegration into client work, workflow planning and structuring in-person office time, and any other issue that is important to them, Walser says. All attorneys can also join the firm’s parent-lawyer network, which fosters organic mentorship and relationship-building opportunities for new parents, she says.
“We recognize that parental leave is a significant time in a lawyer’s life, no matter your level of seniority,” Walser says. “It’s a big deal to step away from practice, focus on your family, try to get some sleep and do all the things, and then return to practice.
“So we really wanted to create a more thoughtful, structured support system that helps our parents return and sets them up for success.”
Supporting new parents aligns with Morgan Lewis’ culture and improves long-term lawyer engagement, Walser adds.
Culture shift
Aggarwal has seen the parental leave coaching program impact the culture at Bryan Cave, which also announced in 2023 that all its lawyers and business services staff would receive 20 weeks of paid parental leave.
Referring especially to soon-to-be dads, Aggarwal says she once had a lot of conversations about whether men in the firm could take the leave and how it would impact their career. But that began to change as more men in partner and senior associate roles starting using the benefit and the program, she also says.
“Luckily, this is less frequent, but a year and a half ago or so, I’d get a call from a dad, and he’d basically say, ‘Has anybody done this?’ And I’d be able to say, ‘Sure, I can connect you with so-and-so in this office so you can talk about their experience,’” Aggarwal says. “That has been hugely beneficial.”
Bryan Cave’s practice group leaders also have supported the parental leave coaching program and invited Aggarwal to talk with their lawyers about why it’s an important resource, she says. In addition to one-on-one coaching, she highlights their ability to access peer support groups. These are cohorts of expecting or new parents who meet with Aggarwal regularly as they’re planning their transition or transitioning back to the firm.
Aggarwal also facilitates the firm’s parenting pods, which are groups of attorneys with children around the same age who continue to meet monthly on their own.
“I do think there has been a real, tangible cultural impact,” Aggarwal says. “I’m not solely attributing that to the program, but I recognize that just talking about these things a lot more and a lot more out in the open has had a positive effect.”
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