Profit Sharing Dilemma: Balancing Growth Potential and Partner Compensation for Young Lawyers

Description

• In this Q&A clip, Harrison discusses options for finding another firm or negotiating salary.
• Being a partner allows for salary negotiation in capitalist society.
• Some firms still practice lockstep compensation, where junior partners receive the lowest salary and compensation increases with seniority.
• However, it is increasingly challenging to find firms that follow this model.

Transcript

Transcript:

Fine. That's fine. Need help finding another firm. You don't have to go to that one. You can also negotiate your salary. So the nice thing about being a partner, it's funny when is that you can negotiate your salary when you're going. The nice thing about capitalist society is there's always a way around all this stuff, and that's typically what happens.

If that's your concern, you either join another firm. Or you joined that firm, and at some point, that will be unsustainable and won't last. That's that type of compensation, by the way, is called lockstep. What used to happen in law firms, and it still happens in many of them, but it was primarily widespread, is that the junior partners would always make the lowest salary.

And as you get more senior towards the end of your career, your compensation will keep increasing. It would happen regardless of whether or not you had business. It was called lockstep compensation. And then that would be funding the retirement of partners and things towards the end of their careers.

Does that happen anymore? Sure. There are certainly some firms that still do it, but it's tough to be there.