Valuing and Judging Partners – Beyond the Elephant Test!
We tend to make informal value judgements all the time about our partners and potential partners. Questions like “Do I like him?”, “Do I respect her?”, “What is she good at?” all require emotional or, at least, unstructured responses. In recent times, these somewhat informal judgements have become more formalised as they often establish the […]
Leadership Links with Partner Performance and Profit Sharing
Partners in law firms are not easy to lead. They may be content to transfer a great many management and administrative tasks to a management team, but there is a raft of sensitive subjects which remains close to their hearts. In these areas, they often consider intervention by professional managers to be unwarranted interference. Additionally, […]
Linking Partner Targets to Profit Shares
The issues of partner performance and rewards are rising on law firm agendas, especially with the impact of new age discrimination legislation. Law firm leaders talk a good game about how the firm ‘rewards what it values, and values what it rewards’ but in reality many firms give scant regard to anything except seniority and […]
Putting a new Partner Profit Sharing System in place
Very few firms are entirely happy with their partner profit sharing systems. For any firm which is considering making any changes, a good starting point is to understand the extent to which the current system is failing to meet the needs of partners or the firm and the extent to which changes may be needed. […]
Managing Expectations: Compensating Unique Lateral Partners
Hiring a high-profile lateral partner from government or in-house roles can be a game-changing opportunity for law firms — or a costly misstep. While such candidates often bring prestige and industry connections, their lack of a private client base makes compensation decisions risky and subjective. Firms must weigh optimistic projections against realistic scenario planning, structure compensation to limit downside risk, and remain wary of unverifiable competing offers. In the end, only about one-third of these hires succeed, with even fewer reaching their projected potential. It’s a high-risk, high-reward gamble that demands careful analysis.
Tweaking Compensation
Of course, there is no perfect compensation system. The unique culture and values of a firm dictates how it splits up profits. What seems like a fair system in a good year may be viewed as painfully draconian in a bad year. Not surprisingly, any individual lawyer’s satisfaction with the current plan is directly related […]
2012 Global Partner Compensation System Survey
In 2006, and again in 2008, we surveyed a significant sample of law firms throughout the world on the subject of partner compensation.
Equity Points for Top Performers
In this article Nick suggests 20 objectives for Equity Structures in law firms.