Firms warned against ditching associate lockstep
City managing partners are warning that ditching associate locksteps as the job market shows signs of recovery could be harmful.
Many firms are gearing up to revamp their current remuneration structures.
Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer last week revealed details of its new ‘career milestone’ model, which will replace the lockstep with a system based on specific development criteria.
Several firms, including Norton Rose and Pinsent Masons, have already abandoned PQE, while CMS Cameron McKenna and Simmons & Simmons are among those understood to be reviewing their systems.
However, one partner at a City firm believes the moves could backfire.
“I’m sceptical about what will happen,” he said. “My worry is that, as soon as the market picks up and everyone wants to keep associates, you can’t risk it.”
A managing partner at a silver circle firm agreed that the trend could disincentivise associates.
“Why provoke them when you’re talking about saving a few bob here and there?” he said. “For a massive firm it could make sense, but for others it would endanger the stability of the firm.”
A managing partner at a firm reviewing its system admitted that the downturn made such a move possible, saying: “If we did this three years ago lawyers would have moved across [to another firm], but in this market it’s a different dynamic.”
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Readers' comments (21)
Wayne Rooney | 4-Dec-2009 5:24 pm
[Proofread version!]
The lockstep question seems to me to be closely related to recruitment policy. If clients knew how easy it is to get into certain firms, would they even begin to accept the continuation of the pay that ticks up for each year of qualification?
I worked at a Silver Circle firm and was astonished both at the standard of lawyering and, not unconnectedly, the intellectual abilities of the average associate, and not because they exceeded expectations.
Even during the boom years I think that by hiring smarter people they firm could have done all the work to a higher standard with a workforce 25-50% smaller. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the partners did not reward me for making this observation. I therefore left for a better firm and have been pleased to find that a career in law can be what I had hoped it would be and not a thankless process of kow-towing to seniors for whom pride in the work product seemed far secondary to getting the cash in.
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