Law Practice Management Asked and Answered Blog

Category: Compensation

Later »

Jul 28, 2015

Law Firm Compensation – Client Origination Guidelines

Question: 

I am the managing partner of a 25 attorney firm in Charleston, South Carolina. Our practice is limited to insurance defense. We have eight equity partners and four income partners, and five associates. Our firm is in second generation and virtually all of our clients were originated by first generation partners that are no longer here – they have since retired. Our compensation system focuses totally on working attorney dollars. I believe that we must begin to stress the importance of origination of new clients and factor that into the equation. I would appreciate your thoughts.

Response: 

Origination of new client business is important in any firm. Many insurance defense firm are too dependent on four or five insurance companies and need to diversity their client portfolio. Origination should be at least a factor in compensation systems – whether treated objectively or subjectively. There are pitfalls and you will need to establish specific rules, guidelines, and a policing committee. 

Here is an example of origination guidelines that some law firms have implemented:

  1. Firm Employee or Employee Referral. Whenever the firm is employed by one of its non-lawyer employees or by a client referred by such employee, the client should be considered a firm client and no origination attribution aware should be made.
  2. Employee of Existing Client. When an employee of an existing client (other than a principal) becomes a client of the firm, the presumption will be made that the employee is a client of the attorney to whom the employer is attributed. There may be extenuating circumstances calling for a different result, and these circumstances should be brought to the attention of the Attribution/Compensation Committee.
  3. Martindale and Similar Lawyer Lists. Referrals generated by Martindale and other such lawyer lists should always be considered clients of the firm.
  4. Clients Resulting from Prior Clients. In the case of a client attracted to the firm by reason of a lawyer's prior representation of another client, the new client shall be presumed to be the client of the lawyer to whom the existing client is attributed unless the new client was demonstrably attracted by the lawyer representing the existing client.
  5. Direct Referral by Existing Client. In the case of a referral by an existing client of Lawyer A to Lawyer C (by reason of Lawyer C's particular expertise), the client shall nevertheless, in most instances, be deemed to be the attributed client of Lawyer A.
  6. In-Town Referrals. Referrals by lawyers in (name of city) resulting from conflicts of interests should be considered firm clients. However, some referrals to our firm are made by other lawyers who have recognized the particular expertise of one of the lawyers in the firm. All in-town referrals should be first referred to the Attribution/Compensation Committee prior to any attribution being made.
  7. Out-of-Town Referrals. In Most instances, out-of-town referrals (other than from lawyer lists) are the result of friendships and professional associations between lawyers. The attribution should properly be awarded to the lawyer to whom the referral is made.
  8. Paralegals. All dollar amounts resulting from the work performed by paralegals shall be attributed entirely to the attorney to whom the client is attributed.
  9. Contingent Fee Cases. Upon receipt of the firm's share of amounts payable under a contingent fee contract, the originating attorney should be attributed ___% of the fee and the remaining ___% should be spread among the lawyers in proportion to their hours of service on the case, taking into consideration their respective hourly rates.
  10. Joint Referrals. The affected lawyers should meet in an attempt to resolve their respective sharing. If, however, the matter is not resolved, it should be referred to the Attribution/Compensation Committee for a binding decision.
  11. Retiring Partners. The clients of retiring partners are presumed to be firm clients.
  12. Attribution/Compensation Committee. All origination attributions should be reviewed by the Attribution/Compensation Committee in the same fashion that it reviews new clients. Independent inquiry should be made of new clients where there may be some question as of the appropriateness of attribution.

Click here for our blog on compensation

Click here for our published articles

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

 

 

 

Jun 02, 2015

Law Firm Partner Compensation and Client Origination Credit

Question:

Our firm is an 8 attorney general practice law firm located in Kansas City, Missouri. Five of the attorneys are equity partners and the other three are associates. The two founding partners are the only ones in the firm that bring in clients – the other partners are just workers. Currently the partners are paid based upon their collections for cases/matters to which they are assigned. They are also credited for work that others do on their assigned matters as well. We are concerned that in a general practice firm such as ours, everyone must be bringing in clients and we are considering changing our compensation system to factor in credit for client origination – bringing in clients. I would appreciate your thoughts.

Response:

All law firms need a mix of finders, minders, and grinders. Finders (client originators) are needed to provide sufficient work to keep the workers busy. Minders (responsible matter attorneys) are needed to manage the portfolio of client work. Grinders (working attorneys) are needed to service and produce client services.  While there are exceptions, in most firms partners must hit on all three of these cylinders. In other words, most of the partners must do well at finding, minding, and grinding. Partners may perform some of these roles better than others, however overall they should be competently performing each of the roles. Very few firms can afford the luxury of having several senior partners only bringing in business without being required to maintain personal production levels as well. Partner compensation research concludes that the most a law firm can afford to pay a rainmaker – over and above his or her own billable hours (fee collections) is the marginal profit derived from the associates the rainmaker can keep busy, regardless of how many partners he or she occupies. The most valuable partners are those who offer a balance of skills: worker, delegator, supervisor, and rainmaker.

Since origination of new clients is the lifeblood of any firm it is a key factor that should be recognized in any compensation system. The exact weight that it is given will depend upon the firm and how dependent it is upon constant client replacement, only a few institutional clients, turnover of clients, leverage ratio, etc. A firm that has a well diversified base of institutional long time clients will typically weigh client origination much lower than a firm that has to constantly replace individual clients.

Click here for our blog on compensation

Click here for our published articles

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

 

Apr 14, 2015

Law Firm Associate Compensation – Bonus Tied to Performance

Question:

I am a partner in a 14 attorney firm in San Francisco and I serve on our associate compensation committee. Presently associate compensation is based on a salary and discretionary bonus. I would like to see a stronger tie to performance. I would appreciate your thoughts.

Response:

I believe that salary should be the primary element in your compensation system for associates. However, you might want to pay a performance bonus for working attorney fees in excess of a certain threshold – say three times salary. So, if you are paying an associate $100,000 you might pay a bonus of 20% for fees collected in excess $300,000 ($75,000 per quarter) and pay the bonuses quarterly. In order to reward other contributions you might want to tie additional bonus to accomplishment of specific strategic goals agreed to in advance each year by you and each associate. For example:

Thus, a maximum of 10% of salary could be received by the associate in goal bonus ($10,000 for a $100,000 associate) and $20,000 could be received if $400,000 in fees were collected – for a total of $30,000 in bonuses.

The goals should be require some degree of stretch and should be result orientated rather than activity orientated. Chair on a bar association committee is a result – attending bar associate meetings without being notices is an activity.

Click here for our blog on compensation

Click here for articles on other topics

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

 

Mar 24, 2015

Law Firm Of Counsel Compensation/Adequate Profit Margin

Question:

I am the managing partner in an eight attorney firm in Phoenix. We are contemplating bringing in a senior lawyer as an Of Counsel that wants to gradually wind down his practice. We are thinking of paying him using an eat-what-he-kills approach whereby he would be paid 40% for his personal production (collected working attorney receipts) and 20% for bringing in the client (origination). Thus, if he brought in the client and did all of the work he would get 60% of the fee. What are your thoughts?

Response:

The approach is fine and I know several law firms that use this approach and these percentages. My concern is with the percentages. Don't forget the overhead. Lets say that he collects $300,000 and that he brought in the business and did all of the work. He would get 60% of $300,000 or $180,000 and the firm would get 40% of $300,000 or $120,000. Typical overhead per lawyer is $100,000 per year or higher. If the overhead is $100,000 there would only be $20,000 profit contribution or 6.6% margin. I believe the firm should make a margin of 25%-30% from associates and Of Counsels.

Examine your overhead. I would suggest 35% on working attorney receipts and 15% for client origination.

You may believe that the overhead consumed is far less that the firm's average overhead per lawyer and that a contribution cost allocation approach allocating only variable/direct costs is more appropriate. However, there are often other costs and I find that many law firms cut themselves short, only cover their overhead, and make very little or no profit margin.

Look over your overhead and determine the profit margin that you desire and go from there.

Click here for our blog on compensation

Click here for articles on other topics

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

 

 

 

Nov 25, 2014

Law Firm Partner Compensation – Individual vs. Firm Based

Question:

I am the managing partner of a 9 attorney firm in Cincinnati. We have four equity partners and five associates. Partners are compensated on the basis of their ownership shares which are currently 25% each. In the past the system worked well – but now we are having problems. The two senior partners are working and contributing less and are taking out half of the compensation which is causing dissatisfaction and division within the firm. We have been discussing alternative approaches. Should we consider a system total focused on individual partner performance and production – an eat-what-you kill if you will?

Response:

I agree that personal production and performance should have a relationship and a tie to compensation. However, a move to a total eat-what-you-kill system might be a drastic first-step move. Eat-what-you-kill approaches can often destroy teamwork in firms that desire to be team-based firms. For firms that want to be lone ranger firms eat-what-you-kill is fine.

Since I don't know what you have done so far it is hard to identify the first step. Sometimes all that is needed is a frank and open discussion and a realignment of percentages tied to recent performance. In other cases is might be appropriate to have different percentages for compensation (participating compensation percentages) based upon say a three years rolling performance average/ratio. One approach would be to use this instead of ownership percentages for allocating profit to the partners. Another approach might be to create two profit pools – say 70% of firm profit and allocate this profit to the partners based upon participating percentages and 30% of firm profit and allocate this profit to the partners based upon ownership percentages.

Obviously there are many of approaches that you can take. This approach moves closer to individual performance but retains firm participation as well.

Click here for our blog on compensation

Click here for articles on other topics

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

 

 

Nov 04, 2014

Law Firm Attorney Compensation in a Contingency Fee Firm

Question:
 
Our firm is a five attorney personal injury plaintiff law firm located in San Francisco. We have 2 equity partners, one non-equity partner and two associates. One hundred percent of our fees are contingency fees. Our attorneys work on some cases together. We do not keep time sheets.

The two equity partners are compensated based upon their ownership interests and this has worked well. We are looking to improve our compensation for the non-equity partner and the two associates. Currently they are paid salaries and a percentage of firm collected fee revenue over a certain threshold. We feel that they have not been profitable and we have been overpaying them. We would appreciate your thoughts.

Response:

Personally I think that a percentage of firm revenue or profit should generally be reserved for equity partners or shareholders. There should be a reason for them to want to become equity partners. I would tie the majority of their compensation to individual performance – client origination revenue, working attorney production revenue, and responsible attorney revenue, and case profitability - being the primary factors. Develop specific guidelines for client origination (rules for the credit – direct effort of the attorney versus the brand of the firm). Since you don't keep time sheets you will have to develop some method for allocating the working attorney credit when attorneys work together on cases – subjective determination of value and contribution to the case, etc. Without timesheets it will also difficult to determine profit at the matter/case level. Decide how you want to weigh origination, working attorney, responsible attorney and case profitability and then use these to determine a compensation percentage to be used for overall compensation or bonus.

Click here for our blog on financial management

Click here for articles on other topics

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

 

May 20, 2014

Law Firm Compensation – Bringing in an Associate with a Small Book of Business

Question:

I am the sole owner of a law firm in Walnut Creek, California. I have three associates and five staff members in the firm. I am looking to hire another associate. The associate I am considering has been out on his own for five years – no office and no employees. He would bring around 30 active matters with him. I was thinking of paying him a salary with a discretionary bonus based upon performance. Fees originated and generated would be a major component of the performance determination that would impact future salary increases, bonuses, and eligibility for partnership. However, I believe that I must do something with regard to the business that he brings with him. I would appreciate your thoughts and suggestions:

Response:

I agree with your general approach with regard to his compensation. Payments for originations for associates gives me pause.  However, I believe you have to treat business that he brings with him differently. Here are my thoughts:

  1. Create a list of the pending matters that he will bring with him. The list should list the A/R and WIP for time bill matters. For flat fee matters whether the fee has been collected and spent, whether there will be any more fee, the amount of work that remains to be completed (percent), and the estimated hours required to complete the work. For contingency fee work – a list of the expected fee - low and high – for matters in progress.
  2. He should get 100% of A/R and unbilled WIP earned but not billed or paid before he joins the firm. 20% of the work done after he is with your firm.
  3. I would pay him 20% of the fees earned (prorated) for flat fee matters while the matter is with your firm if a fee will be due and paid. If not – your firm should be entitled to an offset for the overhead servicing his work for which there will be no fee forth coming.
  4. Once the matters on the list are concluded any future work that he originates would be "firm accounts".

Click here for our blog on compensation

Click here for articles on other topics

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

Apr 22, 2014

Law Firm Financial Management – Higher Profit – Lower Partner Compensation

Question:

Our firm is a 7 attorney firm in Evansville, Indiana – four partners and three associates. I am one of the partners in the firm. Each month we are provided with a profit and loss statement, a billable hours report, fees received reports broken by lawyer, and accounts receiveable reports by lawyer. In 2014 our fee collections are up significantly over 2013 – our expenses are lower – profits are up – yet the money is not there for partner draws and we are having to draw less than we did in 2013? What do you think is happening?

Response:

A couple of reports that are missing from your list - a balance sheet and a statement of cash flows. Even if you are on cash-based accounting not all cash disbursements flow through the profit and loss statement which is the report that reports profit/loss. For the following types of cash disbursements flow through the balance sheet and are not considered expenses:

So while the profit and loss statement may be showing a higher level of profit there could have been other uses of cash that are not reflected on the profit and loss statement. Take a look at the balance sheet and the statement of cash flows reports.

Click here for our blog on financial management

Click here for articles on other topics

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

Archives

Categories

    Subscribe to our Blog