Aug 22, 2017
Measuring Law Partners’ Performance
Question:
I am a partner in a twelve attorney firm in Houston. The firm has five partners and seven associates. We are a first generation firm and we, the partners, have never practiced in other law firms. Currently, the partners have equal ownership interests and are compensated equally. We are experiencing issues with the present method of partner compensation and we are giving some thought to considering other approaches. One of the issues that we are trying to get our heads around is how to measure each partners’ performance – value – and overall contribution to the firm. Do you have any suggestions?
Response:
The first step in a partner’s compensation plan is to develop a system for measuring each partner’s performance. Measuring performance involves selecting the appropriate: (1) performance measurement factors, (2) performance measurement programs, and (3) performance measurement reports.
Performance Measurement Factors
Each firm must decide on its own particular basis for rewarding quality performance by its partners. Factors must be selected against which each partner’s performance can be measured. Then the firm must decide how much weight to assign to each performance factor. The performance factors commonly used to measure partner performance include: (1) professional competency, (2) business development, (3) productivity, and (4) profitability.
Professional Competence
A partner’s professional competence is usually the most important factor in measuring partner performance and is the most difficult to measure because it cannot be easily quantified and it has to be determined subjectively. In addition to technical proficiency professional competence also includes leadership ability, associate mentoring and development, management contribution, and other contributions made to the firm.
Business Development
In many firms a partner’s ability to generate new business is an important performance factor in measuring partner performance. Client origination can be measured in terms of fees generated from new clients and fees generated from new business for existing clients.
Productivity
A partner’s productivity can be measured by determining a partner’s: (1) chargeable hours related to client matters and (2) nonchargeable hours related to those firm matters which the firm has recognized an important partner responsibilities. Another approach is measuring billed or collected fees. Another measure of a partner’s productivity is his or her pyramid of responsibility – the number of associates chargeable hours or collected fees for which the partner is responsible.
Profitability
A partner’s profitability can be measured using three factors: (1) fees billed to clients, (2) realization of fees billed and (3) speed of collection of fees billed. Other measures include collected, effective rate per hour, etc.
Click here for our blog on compensation
Click here for articles on other topics
John W. Olmstead, MBA, Ph.D, CMC
Posted at 06:17 PM in Compensation
Tags: Law, Measuring, Partners, Performance
Categories
- Career Management
- Client Service
- Coaching
- Compensation
- Competitive Business Models
- COVID-19
- Culture
- Financial Management
- Governance
- Human Resources
- Laterals
- Leadership
- Management
- Marketing
- Mergers
- New Firm Startup
- Offices and Facilities
- Partnership
- Practice Sale
- Profit Improvement
- Project Management
- Strategy
- Succession/Exit Strategies
- Technology
- Trends
- Work Life Balance