UK 200 firm Napthens has scrapped lockstep remuneration for partners.
Partners at the Preston-headquartered firm, which has six offices across the North West, voted to change to a performance-related structure last year.
“We found it archaic and difficult to reward overperformers and manage underperformers,” the firm’s CEO John Whittingslow told The Lawyer. “We also found it was unattractive to potential joiners at salaried partner level.”
The new system has seen Napthens combine a baseline profit share with performance-related remuneration dependent on each equity partners’ performance against their own key result area.
“The result has been that partners have become much more focused on their role in the business beyond fee earning,” Whittingslow said. “In the past, things like people management and business development were seen as secondary activities; now partners are being measured on them, they are treated as more important.”
Napthans placed 147th in The Lawyer‘s latest UK200 report, with revenue rising by 1.7 per cent, from £12.2m to £12.4m, in 2014/15. The firm’s net profit stood at nearly £2.5m while average profit per equity partner rose to £150,000.
