Building a Better Law Firm By Giving Grace

AYLA PRESIDENT’S COLUMN

A Case for Paid Parental Leave

BY BLAIR LEAKE, WRIGHT & GREENHILL, P.C.

The opinions expressed in Entre Nous are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of the Austin Bar Association membership or the Austin Bar Association board of directors.

Parental leave is one of the most important benefits law firms offer—or, if we are being honest, that we so often fail to meaningfully offer—in terms of attracting and retaining talented young employees. If there is ever a time in someone’s life that you owe it to the world to show them grace and support, it usually coincides with a birth or a death. As to the former, many of you know the exhausting toll of raising a newborn. Some of you know that toll tenfold because you did so while suddenly experiencing little or no cash flow—as if raising children wasn’t expensive enough as it is.

There are also many of you who really don’t know that toll, because (i) your spouse did most—or all—of the heavy lifting, and/or (ii) your spouse did not work outside the home, and thus your income did not temporarily plummet when your children were born. If you are in the first category, you should give your spouse the sincerest of hugs and beg forgiveness. If you are in the second category, you should thank your lucky stars you were born in a generation where that was possible. Younger attorneys have never—and will never—experience such financial ease when it comes to living and raising a family in Austin as did our colleagues from earlier generations.

Before we get into why parental leave is so important for child development—and thus for building a healthier, smarter, and more mentally stable citizenry—let’s first talk about why it makes financial sense for your law firm. A 2017 Ernst & Young survey found that more than 90% of companies with paid leave policies said their policy had a positive or neutral impact on profitability, productivity, and morale. A 2016 Deloitte study found that 77% of workers said paid leave offerings impacted their decision about where to work. A 2012 analysis from the Center for American Progress found that replacing an employee—which is inevitable when a law firm drives a new parent to quit because the law firm refuses to provide paid time to engage in sufficient early childhood parental care—can cost an employer about one-fifth of that worker’s annual salary. Rest assured, the talented paralegal or attorney you drive away because you are withholding pay when they are at their most vulnerable will not be returning to work for you when they re-enter the workforce. In contrast, the employees you take care of and treat like family during times of need will be loyal, hardworking employees once their leave ends. Do not let anecdotal exceptions make the rule.

If none of the above moves the needle for you, perhaps building a better citizenry long-term might do so—especially in an era when mass shootings, political violence, and uncertain times only seem to be getting worse. According to Harvard University’s Center on the Developing Child, newborn brains form one million new neural connections per second through experience, interaction with adult caregivers, and environmental stimuli. “All [brain] development builds on what comes before, so when children experience stable, nurturing relationships, it fosters the development of healthy circuitry,” per Harvard professor Jack P. Shonkoff, M.D., “and when children experience uncertainty or instability, or abusive or neglectful relationships, it literally disrupts the circuitry in the brain’s architecture as it is being built.” A 2021 study published by the peer-reviewed Infancy journal found children of mothers who received paid maternity leave had significantly higher language scores years later as toddlers. A 2022 study performed by NYU professors found that infants with increased activity of higher-frequency brain waves were 7.39 times more likely to have mothers who had been provided paid maternity leave. These results are ostensibly either because paid leave gave the mother the financial ability to serve as a one-on-one caretaker longer and thus afford the child more individualized attention, and/ or because the lowered financial stress resulted in less burnout and correspondingly fewer instances of neglectful interactions between parent and child.

Disgracefully, the United States is one of only eight countries in the world that does not provide some form of mandated paid maternity leave, and the only high-income country that still miserly and unconscionably refuses to do so. A 2016 Pew Research Center survey found that “older adults, particularly older men, are the least supportive of fathers taking time off from work after the birth or adoption of a child,” which perhaps explains why an industry historically run by older men so often callously neglects to offer paid parental leave—especially paternity leave. Many of the politicians who preach family values as a societal panacea are the same politicians who hypocritically vote against mandated paid maternity leave. Attorneys who believe in the importance of strong family bonds should likewise put their money where their mouths are and make those bonds financially feasible for their employees—and improve both their law firms’ profitability and our society as a whole while they are at it. AL

Blair Leake, AYLA President