In today’s legal market, family forming benefits have moved well beyond the category of “nice to have.” For many lawyers, they’re a deciding factor: in where to work, whether to stay, and how long to stay for.
And the conversation has broadened significantly. It’s no longer just about maternity leave. Firms are increasingly being asked how they support fathers, partners, shared parental arrangements, fertility treatment, adoption, surrogacy, and pregnancy loss. Candidates at every level are paying attention, and the firms that get this right have a genuine competitive advantage in attracting and retaining the lawyers they want.
Why this matters more than ever
Retention in private practice remains a real challenge, particularly at mid to senior associate level. Life events, starting a family, experiencing fertility treatment, navigating pregnancy loss, sit right in the middle of the career years where firms most need to hold onto experienced people. The lawyers going through these experiences aren’t just asking whether leave is available. They’re asking whether taking it will affect their career. Whether flexibility is genuinely supported or just technically offered. Whether the culture makes it safe to actually use the policies that exist on paper.
These are reasonable questions. And the answers matter.
Maternity, paternity, and shared parental leave
The leading firms have moved beyond treating parental leave as something that primarily concerns women. Families come in all shapes and sizes, and benefits need to reflect that reality.
- Clifford Chance offers up to 26 weeks’ full pay for maternity leave, with structured return-to-work support. Fathers and secondary carers can also take leave with guidance on workload management and career transition.
- Linklaters actively encourages uptake of shared parental leave, supporting men who want to take an active caregiving role and giving couples genuine choice over how leave is shared.
- Slaughter and May provides enhanced paternity leave, recognising the importance of early involvement for fathers.
- Mills & Reeve offers 26 weeks’ full pay for maternity, adoption, and shared parental leave, alongside four weeks of paternity leave, with a deliberate effort to ensure fathers can take it without stigma.
- Freeths, recognised as a Top 30 Employer for Working Families, combines flexible policies with mentoring networks for both mothers and fathers.
Adoption, surrogacy, and fertility support
The firms ahead of the curve recognise that support shouldn’t begin at birth; it should extend to the journey that comes before it. And crucially, these benefits apply to all genders, reflecting the reality that fertility decisions and treatment affect both prospective parents.
- Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer provides adoption leave equivalent to maternity leave, with the option to share it between partners.
- Pinsent Masons offers fertility support including time off for appointments and counselling: available to all employees, including men seeking treatment or supporting a partner through IVF.
- Mills & Reeve provides paid leave for IVF appointments and fertility treatment, extending support to partners, not just the employee directly undergoing treatment.
- Freeths integrates fertility support into its wider culture through mentoring and parent networks, making policies genuinely accessible for men and women alike.
Pregnancy loss
This is an area that has historically been overlooked, and where cultural attitudes are finally starting to catch up with the emotional reality for everyone involved.
- Stephenson Harwood and Mishcon de Reya both provide paid leave and counselling for the employee and their partner following pregnancy loss.
- Mills & Reeve offers up to two weeks’ paid leave for early pregnancy loss, including for fathers and partners.
The fact that these policies now explicitly include partners reflects a broader and important shift in how firms are thinking about this.
Flexible and part-time working
Family forming support only works if returning lawyers feel genuinely able to work flexibly, and that applies across genders and caring responsibilities, not just to mothers returning from maternity leave.
- Eversheds Sutherland has structured family and career leave programmes to support transitions for all carers.
- Ashurst and Freeths actively promote hybrid and part-time working, with a deliberate commitment to ensuring that career progression isn’t penalised for those who take parental leave or adjust their hours.
The mechanism matters as much as the policy. Flexibility that exists in theory but feels career-limiting in practice isn’t really flexibility at all.
Transparency and culture
One of the most consistent frustrations candidates raise is unclear or inconsistently applied policies. Firms that communicate their benefits openly, benchmark them against the market, and actively normalise their use send a clear signal: this isn’t just a tick-box exercise.
That transparency matters for everyone: mothers, fathers, and secondary carers alike. And it shows up not just in the policy document, but in whether senior people visibly use the policies themselves, whether managers are equipped to have honest conversations about it, and whether career progression genuinely remains open to those who take leave or work flexibly.
What to ask
If you’re evaluating firms on this, whether as a candidate or as a firm benchmarking itself against the market, the right questions go beyond what’s written in the handbook. Ask about eligibility and pay in specific terms. Ask whether men and women actually use flexible working and parental leave without it affecting their careers. Ask about the full picture: maternity, paternity, shared parental leave, adoption, surrogacy, fertility support, pregnancy loss, and what mentoring or return-to-work support looks like in practice.
Policy and culture aren’t always the same thing. Both matter.
The bottom line
The firms that take family forming benefits seriously, and embed them genuinely into how they operate, don’t just do right by their people. They build stronger, more loyal teams, improve diversity at senior levels, and position themselves as the kind of place that the best lawyers actually want to work.
In a competitive market, that’s not a soft consideration. It’s a strategic one.
If you’d like to understand what’s available to you in the market, or want insight into how your firm’s offering compares, we’re always happy to have a confidential conversation. Get in touch.