A strong year for Shepherd & Wedderburn saw average PEP head towards £300,000 at £270,000 and total turnover grow by 13 per cent to £34.6m.

The final figures will also benefit from a number of accounting changes. The £34.6m does not include an FRS5 uplift, the amount of which is yet to be finalised, while the firm's planned move to LLP status is likely to throw the value of its prudent bad debt provisions back into the mix. The latter would have added around £20,000 per partner to this year's figures.

Shepherds operates a modified lockstep with no gateways within which full equity partners can move both up and down the remuneration ladder. In theory the system has enough flexibility to allow partners to move from the bottom to the top in a single year, but they can only move one place down the ladder over the same period.

All four of the firm's offices performed well last year. The five-year trend for Shepherds, which has seen total revenue rise on average by 14.5 per cent each year, is particularly encouraging.

Lockup is under control, currently running at fewer than 110 days, a particularly good performance for a firm with such a broad practice, which stands up well in comparison with similar firms such as Dundas & Wilson (144 days average) and McGrigors (161 days).