Part of the lore of this New York City–based firm, founded in 1931, is its long history of supporting women. Its part-time-work program has been in place for more than 40 years, and in 1995, for the first time, a reduced-hours associate—Margaret Davenport—was promoted to partner. The firm was among the first to introduce an innovative reduced-hours compensation structure: Instead of using an arbitrary hours standard, it compensates reduced-hours lawyers based on the relationship of their hours to the working pace of the firm’s full-time lawyers; the hours standard is adjusted every six months. More recently, Debevoise & Plimpton established a progressive primary child-care leave policy, giving a total paid-leave benefit of 20 weeks. Its policies continue to translate to success for its women lawyers: In 2010, 66% of the firm's new partners were women, and women have made up fifty percent or more of new partners at the firm for the last 4 years.

Female Equity Partners 17%

Lawyers Working Reduced Hours 11%