DLA Piper Gets Second Honor of Year for Being Family-Friendly

Yale Law Women, a student organization at the university dedicated to promoting the interests of women in the law, named DLA Piper as one of its top ten family-friendly law firms last month.

The firm was ranked ninth among Vault.com’s Top 100 Law Firms that were included in the survey.

DLA Piper was also selected to the inaugural list of “Best Law Firms for Women” that was released in August by Flex-Time Lawyers and Working Mother magazine.

Stefanie Fogel, co-chairwoman of the firm’s Leadership Alliance for Women in the Philadelphia office, said DLA Piper has been very vocal about and active internally in creating opportunities for its female attorneys to succeed.

She said the firm’s 60-attorney Philadelphia office is flexible and has several of its associates on a part-time or flexible schedule.

Bonuses are pro-rated for part-time associates so that they don’t “miss out on assessment of [their] value overall,” she said.

The goal of the alliance program is not just about work-life balance, Fogel said. It is about identifying who the up-and-comers are making sure they have opportunities to grow.

Only the top-ten firms were ranked, but the Yale Law Women organization listed firms alphabetically in the subsequent categories. The top-ten list went as follows: Quarles & Brady, Proskauer Rose, Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, Jenner & Block, Mayer Brown, Covington & Burlington, Arnold & Porter, DLA Piper, Mintz Levin Cohn Ferris Glovsky & Popeo and Faegre & Benson.

Duane Morris, another Best Law Firms for Women winner, ranked somewhere in the runners up category which included rankings from 11th to 30th place. In the “best of the rest” category – which included 31st to 50th place – Dechert and Reed Smith made the cut.

~Gina Passarella, Staff Reporter

Drinker Biddle Adds Public Finance Partner in Florham Park

Drinker Biddle & Reath bulked up its public finance practice in New Jersey today.

The firm added John. J. Scally Jr. as a partner in its Florham Park office along with associate Gregory Tears.

Scally and Tears worked together at McCarter & English. Scally joined the firm directly from McCarter & English and Tears came from Nixon Peabody.

Aside from expanding Drinker Biddle’s public finance practice, Scally will also provide counsel to the firm’s education, health care, investment banking and government clients.

The majority of Drinker Biddle’s public finance practice revolves around serving nonprofits, health care and education clients.

Drinker Biddle has been looking to expand in the areas of public finance since its January merger with Gardner Carton & Douglas. The Chicago firm increased Drinker Biddle’s presence in the health care area and the firm felt it was a natural fit to expand the public finance group around that practice.

“Combining with Gardner Carton’s premier health care practice earlier this year made tax-exempt finance a logical area for expansion,” Drinker Biddle’s public finance practice chairman Charles B. Congdon said in a statement. “With John and Greg, we can really start to bring the full range of public finance services to issuers, underwriters and borrowers on a much larger scale.”

–Gina Passarella, Staff Reporter