Can Lawyers Take Parental Leaves and If So, with What Impacts? The Case of Québec

Lawyers are increasingly females, with women having gained a major entry in this profession and outnumbering males in legal studies and new rights have been put forward in some countries, such as parental leaves. Thus, the modalities by which lawyers use, or forgo, these new rights, in particular concerning parental leaves that can be shared between parents, raise questions in a profession characterized by significant time demands. Does this go so far as to challenge the traditional model of gender relations in the profession? Our analysis of the uptake of parental leaves indicates this is not the case and that firms do not support women and parentality more than was the case when only men dominated the profession. Surprisingly, things do not appear to have changed much over 20 years, as women are still not in the position to put in additional hours, to take on additional cases or responsibilities or to participate in social in evening activities. And still today, women affirm that their incomes are lower and that they get promoted less often than men. It appears that, although it is a right to take maternity and parental leave, those who do take these leaves have less career opportunities, for example less chances to make partner in a firm than those who choose not to take these leaves. While women tend to move to smaller firms with less constraints concerning work hours, male lawyers, contrarily to men in many other professions who take the paternity/parental leave at a rate of 80 % when they become fathers, feel this may be a high price to pay and those in large law firms tend not to take this leave or to reduce its duration.