An increasing number of law firms are codifying policies specifying how associates who opt for part-time or flex-time schedules can ascend to partnership. They include Fish & Richardson, Morrison & Foerster and Boston's Ropes & Gray, which all inked or revised policies this year.

They join firms that have taken similar steps in the past couple of years, including K&L Gates and New York's Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton.

Other firms have more long-standing policies, including Bingham McCutchen; Foley & Lardner; Boston's Goodwin Procter; Perkins Coie of Seattle; New York's Sullivan & Cromwell; and Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr.

Firms say they want to assure lawyers who need part-time or flex-time schedules that their long-term partnership prospects are still viable.

Firms also say they're creating official policies because they want everyone in the firm to treat lawyers opting for alternate schedules the same as other lawyers.

Ropes & Gray, for example, rolled out its new "Impact" program last month to allow associates facing family or health demands to craft a work plan involving some combination of reduced hours, working off-site and flexible hours. Participants' plans could also include a lengthened path to partnership.

ALTERNATE ROUTES

The program an associate puts together with his or her practice group head and the firm's career guidance manager will determine how soon he or she makes partner while on the alternative schedule, said Joshua S. Levy, a Boston litigation partner at Ropes & Gray and co-chairman of the firm's Impact committee.

"We had a concern that people may not be aware how flexible we could be and that it wasn't a cookie-cutter approach," Levy said.

Sometimes lawyers take other jobs or leave the work force without fully exploring their options, Levy said.

Morrison & Foerster revised a long-standing partnership policy this year and implemented its new policy in March to clarify what alternative work arrangements meant for compensation and partnership, said Anna Erickson White, a Palo Alto, Calif., partner and one of the firm's three managing partners for operations.

Although working part time may delay an associate's partnership promotion, the policy makes it clear that lawyers are "still going to be evaluated under the same criteria," White said.

"What's clearer is how much you have to work on a reduced schedule before your [partnership bid is] delayed for a year," White said.

Last November, Fish & Richardson instituted a written policy outlining reduced-hours options and partnership expectations after approving alternative arrangements on an ad hoc basis for years, said Nancy Stagg, a principal in the San Diego office who is also national chairwoman of the firm's diversity initiative.

The policy explains that working reduced hours, or up to 30 percent less than Fish & Richardson's annual 1,900 billable-hour requirement, won't affect promotion, but it may delay it if the reduced-hours arrangement is long term, Stagg said.

"We looked at it as a good retention tool," Stagg said.

The firm also assigns a principal to monitor the work assignments of each associate in the reduced program to ensure they're quality assignments, Stagg said.

"You won't retain people if they work less hours but don't have a good experience," Stagg said. "We want to make sure the situation is monitored."

Explicit policies are also key to getting everyone else in the firm to support the lawyers who are using the part-time or alternative schedules, said White.

"It's important that the firm is supportive of working parents for recruiting and retention needs," White said. "[We want] to make sure people are treated the same and the same questions don't keep coming up over and over."