The pressure was on Denton Wilde Sapte (DWS) last year to improve its financial performance following the previous two years, which saw it lose a fifth of its partnership and its average PEP plummet dramatically.

The jury is still out on whether the firm is out of the woods. The renegotiation of its lease at 1 Fleet Place in London to remove a break clause helped drive PEP up by 37 per cent to £375,000, adding £45,000 per partner on average. Without this PEP would have been up by only 18.1 per cent to £329,000.

However, DWS has not been able to counter the public impression of a shrinking firm with its figures. A high attrition rate coupled with a diminishing turnover, which since 2002-03 has dropped by 16 per cent, and a partnership that shrank in the 2005-06 financial year from 168 to 148, all point to a firm that has retrenched significantly in recent years. DWS attempted to rebuild this year by making up 26 partners in May.

This year DWS has also attempted to reduce its debtor days: it averaged 66 at year-end compared with 90 at the end of the 2004-05 financial year, a significant reduction of 27 per cent.

For remuneration partners are given 45 points when they become equity partners. Each year they receive five more points up to a maximum of 90, which means its takes 10 years to progress to the top of the lockstep. The lockstep accounts for 72.5 per cent of the profit available to partners, with the rest based entirely on merit.

Non-equity partners or junior partners receive a fixed share of the profit and six points. They also receive a portion of their remuneration based on merit. Junior partners' ascension into the equity is based purely on merit and not on length of service.