Here at Above the Law, we know how difficult it can be to have children and successfully return to work, so we make it a habit to applaud the expansion of Biglaw firms’ parental leave programs — especially if they’re gender neutral and applicable to all firm personnel, from staff members to associates. What we rarely have the opportunity to praise are firms that offer health benefits that include fertility treatments and family-planning services — not because these benefits don’t exist, but because they’re not publicized as often as parental leave plans are.
Hearing that you need assistance to conceive a child can be heartbreaking, and paying for the assistance can be financially out of reach, even for Biglaw employees. That’s why benefits covering fertility and family-planning services are viewed as major perks.
Which firm is willing to step up and assist its associates and staff members when it comes to starting families? It’s Weil Gotshal, and firm management says diversity is at the heart of these offerings. The American Lawyer has the details on Weil’s offerings:
Through a partnership with the fertility management firm WINFertility, both non-J.D. professionals and attorneys enrolled in Weil’s health benefits plan can elect to do up to three in vitro fertilization cycles. On average, one IVF cycle costs $10,000 in the U.S.
Additionally, employees are being offered elective egg freezing with one free year of storage, a benefit specifically requested by several firm lawyers.
The firm will also reimburse its attorneys and staff looking to adopt or conceive through surrogacy up to $25,000 per event and offer a slew of adoption and surrogacy specialists. The average U.S. adoption costs around $40,000 and surrogacy, on average, costs between $75,000 to over $100,000.
These benefits, along with other recently announced services, are part of Weil’s plans to compete in the Biglaw benefits arms race to attract and retain diverse employees.
“I think in part this is about attracting diverse talent to make sure that this is the kind of firm that will support them in any way that they want to build their family in the future. It’s also a retention tool to let them know that we support them throughout their lives,” [Meredith] Moore, [Weil’s director of diversity and inclusion,] said.
Kudos to Weil on its new family-friendly suite of benefit offerings. This is something we’ll keep an eye on as firms continue to cater to work-life balance requests from millennial employees and diversity demands from clients. Hopefully your firm is will decide to offer important benefit policies like these soon if it’s not doing so already.
Weil Rolls Out Firmwide Adoption and Fertility Reimbursements [American Lawyer]
Staci Zaretsky is a senior editor at Above the Law, where she’s worked since 2011. She’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email her with any tips, questions, comments, or critiques. You can follow her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.