Diversity & Inclusion: JT Schuweiler

Listen to this article

When Fox Rothschild’s Diversity Committee members began thinking about modernizing the firm’s parental-leave policy in 2016, they turned to J.T. Schuweiler to lead the effort.

Oppenheimer Wolff & Donnelly had merged with Fox at the beginning of the year, and Schuweiler joined the new 850-lawyer firm after receiving his J.D. from the University of Minnesota Law School that spring. Long active in LGBT organizations, he joined the Diversity Committee and its LGBTQ & Allies subcommittee, and he volunteered to head the review of the firm’s policy on parental leave.

“It caught our eye that this parental leave policy was just not appropriate anymore for our changing firm,” Schuweiler recalls.

In studying the subject, Schuweiler found that in many firms, including his own, parental-leave policies make distinctions between paternity and maternity. Birth mothers receive significantly more time off, including short-term disability, while fathers — including gay men who adopt children — get two weeks.

Schuweiler looked at what other firms were doing in modernizing their parental-leave policies and, in the end, the firm adopted a new uniform policy that treats everyone the same. Birth mothers retain the same short-term disability, but beyond that all parents receive eight weeks of leave to care for a child upon birth, adoption, or placement of a foster child.

Schuweiler, an associate in the firm’s general corporate practice, has committed himself to LGBT causes since his high-school days in River Falls, Wisconsin. He was a member of OUTlaw during law school and is also a member of the Minnesota Lavender Bar Association.