Law Firm Compensation – Changing System to Incorporate Client Origination

Question:

Our firm is a small insurance defense/corporate litigation firm in Los Angeles, California. We have six partners and 7 associates. Our partner compensation system is primarily based upon working attorney collections with no incentives or rewards for bring in clients – client origination. We have been thinking of including client origination as a new metric in our system. We would like to know your thoughts regarding client origination and partner compensation.

Response:

Here are my thoughts in general.

Pros and Cons of Origination Credit

Client or matter origination credit is a touchy subject. Some firm-first or team-based firms refuse to track it at all for fear that it will open a can of worms and will be divisive. At a recent bar association presentation, the presenter and managing partner of a firm stated, “one of the quickest ways to split up a law firm is to incorporate client origination into the partner compensation system” Other firms track origination credit and use it as a factor in subjective compensation systems but do not compensate origination directly or in the form of numerically determining partner compensation percentages. Many firm’s that use formulaic or eat-what-you-kill systems do not include client origination and only include working attorney and/or responsible (billing) attorney collections. Other eat-what-you-kill firms do incorporate client origination.

Personally, I believe that a law firm should track and recognize the importance of origination and use that knowledge to determine attorney career advancement to the different tiers (non-equity partner, managing partner of an office, and equity partner) and to differentiate different levels of income among lawyers without pursuing a formulaic or commission approach to compensation. While I believe that origination should be tracked, recognized, and rewarded, it has not been my experience that a change in the compensation system will make rainmakers out of service partners or associates.

Tracking of Origination Fee Credits

There should be an expectation that an individual’s business origination efforts and results will improve over time. Fees collected should be the controlling metric used in determining origination. Origination should be tracked at the matter level as opposed to the client level. This provides greater flexibility to share origination credits. Tracking origination should not require a formal scorekeeping system. According to recent surveys less than half of the law firms grant formal origination credits.

Duration of Origination Credits

Origination policies can cause hoarding of client relationships and matters, creation of origination credit annuities, and divisive internal competition. To mitigate this tendency firms often limit the duration of the credit and sunset the origination credit after so many years – often five years. One option is to grant the origination credit on all matters opened for a new client for the first three or five years that the client is with the firm and after that time origination credit for new matters of a client would be credited to the firm, responsible, or billing attorney.

Origination Guidelines/Protocols

It is important that the firm establish written guidelines and protocols for allocating business origination credits whether the firm is using origination directly or indirectly in compensation.

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John W. Olmstead, MBA, Ph.D, CMC

Posted at 03:42 PM in Compensation

Feb 02, 2021

Law Firm Compensation – Changing System to Incorporate Client Origination

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