Child-Care Plans Help Law Firms at Bottom Line : Emergency care: The $20-per-day charge can save a firm the loss of an attorney’s time for an entire day.

Progressive social programs are nice but their path is never so smooth as when they make bottom-line sense too.

So it comes as no surprise that law firms, which charge clients more than $100 for an hour of an attorney’s time, are at the forefront of providing emergency child care for employees. For the average $20 a day that a firm pays a child-care center, it can save the loss of an attorney for an entire day.

“There’s a very direct benefit to the company because parents can continue their billable hours,” said Nancy Saltford, a visiting scholar at the Employee Benefit Research Institute in Washington, who specializes in child care. “I’ve seen (emergency child care) most often at law firms.”

Emergency child care is a service that picks up where the regular service falls short: The day sitter is sick, on vacation or has suddenly quit. Some emergency care programs accept sick children, many do not.

The Washington firm of Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering prevented the loss of 1,201.5 billable hours last year by providing its 45 attorneys with an alternative to staying home with a child whose regular care provider was unavailable. In Orange County, Morrison & Foerster is hoping to do as well.

The Irvine firm has contracted with nearby Turtle Rock Pre-School to take one child a day on an emergency basis. Emergencies in the form of a runny nose are not covered, however; the school does not accept sick children.

The program began May 1. The school will accept one child each morning, on a first-come-first-served basis, at a charge of $10 to the parent. The firm pays a monthly fee to hold the spot open. Turtle Rock will often have room for a second child, for which the parent pays a $25 fee, but the school probably won’t be able to handle more.

Half of its 44 attorneys and 60 staff members are parents of young children and are likely to use the service, posing some potential conflicts. “This is all being done on a trial basis,” said Marilyn Martin-Culver, mother, attorney and member of the firm’s child-care committee. “We’re trying to assess the need and see what circumstances come up.”

The firm has not calculated the number of work hours it loses each year because a parent has stayed home with a child. But the child-care committee chairman, Andrew Bernstein, said he expects an increase in productivity. To find out just how much, he will track how often the service is used in the coming year.

Productivity is one reason Morrison & Foerster is interested in child care; image is another reason. For the past two years, the firm has been on Working Mother magazine’s list of top 10 companies for working mothers. The Irvine office of Morrison & Foerster is the first to develop an emergency child-care plan, although the other 10 offices of the San Francisco-based firm are also considering them.

“I was looking for a firm that had more progressive attitudes about women,” Martin-Culver said . “Here you can be a woman and do the things women do, like be a wife or a mom, and not worry that you’re going to be perceived as not professional or committed.

“In a lot of firms, if you are a mom, you find yourself apologizing constantly.”

Martin-Culver works three days a week at the office, during which time her 3-year-old daughter attends a preschool for $270 a month. Her husband works full time.

She has installed a facsimile machine and other office equipment in her home so she can work from there. But as a trial lawyer, Martin-Culver’s court dates can easily fall during her scheduled days at home, so she predicts the emergency service will be handy. Also, she has visited Turtle Rock school and met the teachers and feels good about the program, she said.

While law firms are leading the charge for emergency child care, hospitals and huge companies such as IBM are more likely to provide on-site care, Saltford said. Smaller employers sometimes pool their efforts and establish a child-care center that serves an office park or a shopping center.

Just this week(), a new business park in Brea, called Brea Place, is opening a center that will accommodate 152 children. When it is complete, the 55-acre park will include offices, retailers and a 230-room hotel. Parents pay from $75 to $90 a week for after-school and summer care for children 4 through 12--the younger the child, the higher the cost. The charge is $140 a week for 6-week-old infants because they require more one-on-one care.

The child-care center will help “woo mothers back into the shrinking labor pool,” according to Laura Peterson, vice president of Cornerstone-West Inc. of Santa Monica, a child-care consulting and management firm that operates the center in Brea. “These services are credited with increases in employee productivity, morale and loyalty, as well as decreases in turnover and absenteeism,” Peterson said.

Cities as well as employers are seeing the benefits of ready child care. The availability of such services attract home buyers and potential employees for local businesses. The city of Irvine has a child-care coordination office that has as its goal the recruitment and training of child-care providers for 1,385 additional children by 1992. Space for more than 3,000 children has been created since the office was established in 1987.