Jan 08, 2020
Law Firm Partner Compensation and Performance Reviews
Question:
Our firm is a fourteen partner firm in the northern suburbs of Chicago with ten partners and four associates. We are a general practice firm with different partners focusing on specific practice areas. Our partner’s compensation is determined by a three member compensation committee. The compensation committee uses a combination of quantitative data based upon working attorney fee collections and client fee originations and makes a subjective determination regarding other contributions that a partner has made to the firm. The problem that we have is the compensation committee does not have a way to effectively measure the other contributions that are being considered subjectively. We would appreciate your thoughts.
Response:
Your problem is a common problem. While it is easy to measure working attorney, responsible attorney, and originating attorney fee collections, billable hours, realization rates, and other hard measures of short-term financial performance, (it is hard to capture the subtler aspects of partners’ contributions such as mentoring new lawyers, firm management, idea development) and its virtually impossible to measure the long-term present value of each partner’s work and contribution.
The key is to make the subjective considerations more measurable. Many firms are supplementing the easily measured economic contributions per partner with additional measurements to determine the actual value per partner and incorporating into their compensation systems. Some firms:
- Measure client retention and solicit feedback from present and former clients
- Measure client satisfaction scores
- Require annual business plans from each partner to be approved by the compensation committee with specific measurable goals for the upcoming year
- Conduct partner peer reviews via online questionnaires
- Conduct annual partner performance reviews (compensation committee)
Partner performance reviews are often avoided like the plague by many firms. They are time consuming and it is hard to give candid feedback to colleagues. However, without partner performance reviews neither the partners nor the firm will reach full potential. When partner performance reviews are used not only to review performance but to set measurable goals this data can be incorporated into the compensation system and provide additional hard data for providing a true measure of partner contribution and value.
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John W. Olmstead, MBA, Ph.D, CMC
Posted at 07:58 AM in Career Management, Compensation, Human Resources, Partnership
Tags: Firm, Law, Partner, Performance, Reviews
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