Shearman & Sterling is pleased to announce several enhancements to its parental leave policy to provide additional time off for working parents following a birth, foster placement or adoption.

The new policy increases primary care giver leave for all U.S. lawyers to 20 weeks paid. All U.S. business services will also see a boost in their primary care giver leave to 14 weeks from 0 and 6 weeks’ pay (hourly and salaried respectively). The firm will also provide 8 weeks’ paid new child care leave for lawyers and business services regardless of the parent’s gender following a birth, foster or adoption. 

"Our enhanced parental leave policy allows us to further support our people at key stages of their life by increasing the length of paid leave and by providing greater support throughout. The next important step is to continue to enable our people to use this new policy to the fullest extent,” said Creighton Condon, Senior Partner of Shearman & Sterling.

The new policy was effective as at September 1, 2017 and applies to U.S. paid legal and business services employees.