Working Mother magazine today announced that Leonard, Street and Deinard has been named one of the 50 best law firms in the United States for women lawyers.

The ranking, established by Working Mother and Flex-Time Lawyers, honors the top law firms in the nation for their family-friendly policies and business development initiatives that are retaining women and advancing them into the leadership pipeline.

Along with the other ranked firms, Leonard, Street and Deinard is featured in the December/January issue of the magazine and on www.workingmother.com. The full list of honorees can be found here: Best Law Firms for Women.

Leonard, Street and Deinard was the first Minneapolis law firm to name a woman, Irene Scott, to partner in the late 1950s. The firm was singled out by Working Mother for the following achievements, building on that tradition:

• 43% of associates are women, up from 39% in 2009.
• Since January 2011, women comprise 60% of new attorney hires.
• Women now fill 31% of all leadership roles, including occupying two of the nine positions on the Board of Directors.
• Formal mentoring and motivational peer-group meetings to help accelerate progress.
• A new policy allows associates to speed up or slow down their partnership track to accommodate family needs.
• The firm’s Women’s Initiative shines a spotlight on the talent and contributions of the firm’s women attorneys and builds community.

"We at Leonard, Street and Deinard are delighted to be included among the country’s best firms for women lawyers,” said Barbara Portwood, a shareholder, member of the board of directors and co-chair of the Women’s Initiative at the firm. “We have worked tirelessly, at all levels of the firm, to ensure that Leonard, Street and Deinard not only draws top talent but also supports women attorneys in all aspects of their professional and personal lives.”

Working Mother and Flex-Time Lawyers founded the 50 Best Law Firms initiative for Women in 2007 to celebrate the law firms that are most successful in retaining and promoting women lawyers. The goal is also to give law firms the benchmarking tools to enable them to improve the status of women in their firms in the future.

“Nearly one third of women lawyers are leaving the legal workforce independent of maternity leave,” said Carol Evans, president of Working Mother Media. “The Working Mother and Flex-Time Lawyers 50 Best Law Firms for Women have led the way in creating new models for the rest of their profession in promoting women and developing more generous work life policies. These firms deserve recognition for working to improve women’s advancement and to equalize their compensation and access to business development.”

Deborah Epstein Henry, president of Flex-Time Lawyers LLC, states, “These firms understand that their efforts towards women need to expand to not only focus on work life issues but also on women gaining access to sponsors as well as business development and leadership opportunities. We hope these firms will lead the charge to further improve the status of women in the profession by creating structural change within the law firm model as well as empowering women to take the individual action steps they need to make sustainable change.”

About Flex-Time Lawyers
Flex-Time Lawyers LLC is an international consulting firm founded by Deborah Epstein Henry in the late 1990s, providing advisory, training and speaking servicesto employers and professionals on work life balance, retaining and promoting women, and new models of legal practice. For more information, please visit http://www.flextimelawyers.com.

About Working Mother Media
Working Mother Media, a division of Bonnier Corporation (bonnier.com), publishes Working Mother magazine and its companion website, workingmother.com, and the Working Mother Research Institute. Working Mother Media’s mission is to serve as a champion of culture change. Working Mother magazine reaches more than 2 million readers and is the only national magazine for career-committed mothers.