CC re-examines associate bonuses
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Clifford Chance is set for a radical overhaul of its associate bonus system, with the maximum award now open only to senior associates and payments no longer based primarily on hours worked.
The maximum bonus payout available to assistants at the magic circle firm remains at 40 per cent of base salary, but anyone below senior associate level will no longer be eligible for the top bracket.
Previously, any associate with a minimum of four years’ PQE qualified for an award of 40 per cent.
As before, lawyers with six months’ to a year’s PQE can receive as much as 20 per cent, with the figure rising to 30 per cent for anyone from one and a half years’ PQE upwards.
In addition, the firm will abandon its system of fixing bonus allocation to hours worked.
A spokesperson for Clifford Chance said: “While billable and investment hours continue to be important, the bonus will not be directly linked to achieving a target number of hours. We’ll weigh a number of factors to ensure a balanced and flexible bonus scheme.”
The news comes after Clifford Chance joined Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer in announcing that it would unfreeze associate salaries. Linklaters, which did not freeze salaries, has also revealed its associate pay scales for 2010-11, with bands staying at the same level as last year, having been scaled back 12 months ago.
Readers' comments (7)
Anonymous | 12-Apr-2010 8:42 am
“While billable and investment hours continue to be important, the bonus will not be directly linked to achieving a target number of hours. We’ll weigh a number of factors to ensure a balanced and flexible bonus scheme.”
Really?
This is code for "instead of giving you an objective, transparent criteria for acheiving a bonus, we are now making the criteria deliberately obscure, so that we have cover when we can't afford / don't want to pay the 40% bonus we previously promised you."
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Anonymous | 12-Apr-2010 9:35 am
Any news on non fee earners, will they get a pay increase too?
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N | 12-Apr-2010 1:25 pm
Or Anonymous it moves from the time at desk measure of productivity, which encourages over charging hours which leads to over billing the client or excessive write offs, to one that encourages actual productivity.
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Anonymous | 12-Apr-2010 1:35 pm
I actually quite like this, I have felt for a while that being 'at desk' is not conducive to good working practice.or productivity.
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Anonymous | 12-Apr-2010 4:48 pm
Nobody gets a 40% bonus at CC or FBD. NOBODY!
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Anonymous | 12-Apr-2010 5:01 pm
Couldn't agree more - the sooner people realise that 'work' and 'billable hours' are not synonymous with one another, the sooner law firms will start becoming more equitable places to work.
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Are you kidding? | 13-Apr-2010 4:06 am
For those of you who believe this policy will result in less emphasis on billable hours - please this policy shift relates purely to how CC compensates its associates.
CLIENTS will continued to be billed at hourly rates - until THAT policy changes, I don't see how you can conclude that CC is making this change under a "productivity / quality of life" analysis. So long as CC continues to be paid on an hourly basis, it will continue to demand more hours from its associates.
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