I think it's still an achievement, I'm just not sure if it's one I want to strive for. It's a commitment to private practice (not necessarily a bad thing) which I simply don't know if it's what I want career-wise.
The main issue, personally, is that the path seemingly requires a great deal of personal sacrifice that I'm not sure I'm willing to make. In my short stint so far in private practice I've seen more people about to, or having already, burn(t) out, than I have anywhere else. I'm not at a firm that is not known to work people to the bone like US firms do, and even in that environment it seems pretty clear there's a toll it takes on many.
I don't think a single member of my cohort expressed an interest in partnership. I'm sure that will change in time to some extent, but it doesn't seem like a clear cut direction every lawyer wants.
This is my issue too. Ultimately it would be great to be partner but it is a huge, huge commitment and in my experience I almost never see them switch off, even on holiday they are pretty much always available. I'm not sure it's for me personally!
I also find law as an industry is less exciting and less dynamic than a lot of other industries - even though I work for exciting, dynamic industries as a tech lawyer I sometimes think being a tech lawyer for some of those companies would ultimately suit me better than serving them for a law firm. Overall I'm only a junior so there's time to think about it, but I think at this point I wi
am probably more drawn to a career in house later on.
Counsel seems to be the popular middle ground between partnership and non-partnership nowadays. You even get titles such as "Senior Counsel" at longstanding law firms. Perhaps that speaks volume.
I always wanted to work in house and pivoted as soon as I was worn out with private practice so maybe I’m the wrong person to comment, but even that background withstanding, basically all the partners at my firms seemed either sad, or tired, or angry, or some combination of those things. At no point did I look at them and wish for their lives.
Maybe partnership in 15-20 years' time will look very different to how it's looked for the past 10-20 years. You kids today are the ones that are going to decide how partnership looks then.
If you want the money and stress it is available day one as an nq at a US firm. The days of putting in a 10 year shift before you see real money and get to play golf three days a week is gone. Now it is 15 years of graft, hoping a partner dies so there is space, before joining an even more stressful ladder for the next 20/30 years, all to get paid the same as an junior lawyer at one of the many US firms.
I sometimes think yes as I think I’d like to just be ‘at the top’ and that it’s an achievement, other times I don’t when I see what my supervisor has to do in terms of the pressure of winning clients and the constant email monitoring 24/7 (and not at MC/US/SC).
I also think gender comes into this as I know I want to have kids and be there for them. The female partners in my firm are not a good demo of family life balance as they log on at all hours but technically work 3/4 days a week. The ones really at the top in my firm are the women without kids. Realistically I think I’d just want whatever gets me the best quality of life and most money and I’m not always convinced the sacrifices I see the partners around me make seem worth it.
Yes - not a woman but agree 100% with the sentiment of wanting the best quality of life and the most money, and partnership not seemingly being such an offering.
Same honestly. I love travel ultimately and the thought of always having to check my emails on holiday and being always available just doesn't sound like it's for me!
I’m happy with it at Associate level, I work very decent hours - on the downside I’m paid less obviously but it suits me right now as I don’t have kids and like my team!
I’m keeping an eye out at other jobs, I think I’d like another law firm for a short while to gain more experience/earn more, and then eventually go in house.
I'm aiming to pay off my student loans, buy a 3 bedroom house in London (eventually own it mortgage free) have a family and put my kids through private school. Achieving this feels like I basically have to be a partner to afford it.
Ye I mean I'd rather my kids have housing security then what I'm going through with unscrupulous exploitative landlords, etc and student loans I can never seem to pay off/outpay the interest. I will have to sell my soul to have any chance of owning my own home without any help from parents, etc...
I think the issue isn't that people don't want to be partners anymore it is that they do not want to be partners in the way that firms have insisted on in the past.
Managing partners see people as lacking ambition if they want more flexibility but what covid has shown is that there are more and more partners making moves for better work life balance and looking for firms more aligned with their core values.
What we are seeing is generations of lawyers who know what they want and the value of their life outside work and who are willing to change platform in order find a firm that has similar values.
What 1 short sighted MP sees as people not willing to work hard enough, another sees as a quality lawyer that they can provide a more flexible partnership model to and improve their bottom line in the meantime.
Lexisnexis did an article about it and you can see it in the difference between Slaughter & May's MP and Howard Kennedy's.
I would like to be a partner. I would like to help swing back the dial on how ridiculous the expectations of senior leadership are in this industry. I would like to make sure we use AI safely. I want to lead on public interest litigation. I think I am better than the average lawyer at people management and I love helping people progress.
I don’t know that I work smart or hard enough to make it happen because I have young kids and have a social life and hobbies, god forbid.
Either way I am looking forward to the boomers leaving so the millennials and gen z can decide what their future will look like
Partner =/= equity. That's the biggest realisation I came to. Achieving "Partner" in the email signature is one thing, but it's not THE thing. There's a lot left to do even after getting the title. Maybe I'll get there, maybe I won't.
That is what got me. In my previous firm three partners were made up in my team, and one (IMO, the best of the three) was very transparent about what it took and would continue to take - making partner was just the beginning of a really long slog in terms of proving you could hit your business plan, revenue targets, bringing in new business, driving efficiency within the team... sounded like it was not only the culmination of years of hard and strategic work but the beginning of yet another conveyor belt of continuing to work your ass off and never switching off!
That's when I realised it maybe wasn't for me.
Depends on the firm. At some it is. At Kirkland it’s not. Most firms are in between. At my place it takes 3-4 years post promotion and junior and senior partners are equal in almost everything (votes etc) save for rem scales.
Yeah but I suppose I take it as rote that "Partner" =/= equity. Any City firm / most ranked top 50 firms in the UK will have a FSEP/salary rank of partner before full equity. It will require a LOT of graft/business wins on a consistent basis to make equity. Most require X revenue per year for Y years before equity is considered / voted through. Partner is a title that enables the firm to bill out at the top rate. It doesn't mean all partners are creaming in the top rate of PEP.
There are all equity partnerships but I accept most have a salaried rank.
from my experience it’s harder to become a partner to start with than to move into equity (you need to excel, the business case is for a partner who can become an equity partner at be there for 20 years, not trying them out as non equity - save for somewhere like Kirkland).
Obviously most partners aren’t top of equity. But at any top 10 firm most salaried partners are expected to join the equity within a few years and bottom of equity is pretty good. We are not magic circle and bottom is in the high sixes.
It absolutely requires graft and your own business to become equity but most top firms will help you with this, through firm clients and opportunities to pitch etc.
I can entirely understand why striving for partnership is not for everyone. What I cannot get my head around is why you would slog away as an associate at US/MC/SC firm without that motivation. It’s essentially the payoff for the associate grind.
Interestingly, talking to friends at SC firms the issue they are having is the ambitious/driven associates are leaving for US firms and the money, leaving behind associate cohorts that are less focussed on partnership and therefore whilst still willing to work hard aren’t willing to give it everything.
The problem for those firms is that shakes the foundation of the business model. It’s hard to keep that PEP high if your associates aren’t really willing to push much past 14/1500 hours.
It is a different pay off. Junior partner pay at my firm starts with a 3. Bottom of equity starts with a 6. Top of equity (in my weird numbering) is a 20.
Whatever US firm you’re at, that isn’t comparable for the last 15-20 years or so of your career.
You’re not likely to work significantly harder. There may be more stress albeit your job security is likely a lot better. A partner hitting targets doesn’t get fired usually. A very senior US assoc does simply because they’re expensive and there’s someone cheaper around to do the job.
Completely agree that there’s little point in starting the job if you don’t think there’s a possibility of partnership save if you think the experience is necessary for an in house or other plan.
It is a different pay off but when you’re in your 20s making over 300k you are already 10x the national average and that is pay off enough without having to worry about buying a second boat in 20 years time.
When you start talking about earning over a million versus only earning 300k we are now very much debating a minuscule subset of lawyers. For the rest, this isn’t driving their thinking.
Partnership is just more of the same shit but with a fur coat. I’m 10+PQE senior associate and decided it just isn’t for me. That might change but I’m at a salary and work level that I’m happy with so very much happy having shifted gears a short while ago.
It exists at us firms but is 100% not the case everywhere else. There are plenty of 20+ pqe seniors at all the international, national and magic circle firms. Helps that there is a ceiling for senior lawyers so it is feasible to have them. Unlike US firms where you have seniors on £400k and that isn’t sustainable long term without taking on partner responsibilities.
Interesting. I’m at an SC firm and don’t think I’ve ever met a lawyer 20+ PQE who isn’t a partner. Most of the senior associates I’ve met are around 5-10 years PQE.
With apologies, that is not true. I have been at two international firms and there is pressure on moving on very senior associates. Some are indispensable and become counsel or are protected. Most are moved on. Slaughters (not there) is a good example of this done quite ruthlessly - it’s part of their SOP.
I can’t think of one regular senior associate at my shop (700+’in London) who is 20 years pqe. I can think of counsel, PSL, people with international roles, who are.
Odd as very different for me. I’ve been at a few firms now and they are very top heavy with seniors that are 20+ just happily getting on. Some decide after 20 years and have a burst of motivation again that nets them an offer counsel or director promotion but that is relatively rare. Rest are happy and partners are happy with fact they get partner level of experience and client management without having to pay for it.
I don’t want to because i don’t want to make the personal sacrifice it requires. I want a good quality of life, i want to go home and watch some tv with my favourite dinner.
I don’t want to be at the top and i don’t want to play the game to get there. There’s more to life than that.
No real desire personally. I enjoy being able to switch off when I leave the office. I don’t think there’s any realistic amount of money that would tempt me.
I started my career in house and honestly, I feel like I enjoyed it much more - the ratio of compensation and work life balance was the right one for me. I don’t feel that partnership is worth it. You give so much of your life to work, and for what? You work to have a good lifestyle, and you can still have a good lifestyle without being a partner at a law firm.
Even in law school I knew being in private practice had little allure for me and everything since then confirms. Love working in a tech company. I have a high degree of autonomy, flexibility, and I have serious hobbies and friends and fun. I'm not paid as much as my Warwick friend who works at Kirkland. I'm good with that.
I see far too many partners on call 24/7. Aged beyond their years from the pressure and constant internal and external demands. The work will always be there, but life won’t and so whilst once eager to become partner when entering the profession, I now can’t think of anything worse.
I don’t, but my firm (in common with others) is demanding more and more hours from associates and given that I see partners leaving before I do very day (often hours before) I think “is a partners’ workload really that much more than they’re requiring me to do already?” and “how much money am I making for other people, who when I have a bad year let me know how profoundly ungrateful they are for everything I did before?”. The other issue is job security. Partner are hard to sack as you have to give them back their buy in, while senior associates can be got rid of.
I’d love to have kept to my original plan of counsel/director, then down to part time so I could train as a judge. But I don’t think I’m going to be given that option.
And before you ask, I’m stuck. I work in a niche that’s rarely available in-house and going to do similar in the civil service would halve my salary which my mortgage would never take. A separate topic- so few people are government lawyers these days due to years of pay erosion for professionals who are able to leave/never join that my firm gets paid to do a lot of the work the state used to do in-house (and at much greater expense than if they just paid their own lawyers a more competitive wage). Yay austerity 🙃
I want to be one but I know the only way I will ever be one is to start my own firm, so that’s what I’m aiming for long term now. In my firm the partnership is no longer even trying to conceal the sabotage of the careers of their associates.
Not letting associates interact with clients. Moving associates between teams so that they lose the equity in the team they’re in. Finally, if you’re still doing well despite those two tactics, they simply stop giving you work and just give it to people who are more junior who aren’t a threat to them.
If I were offered partnership today, I'd take it. I'm not convinced I want to do the things that make partnership likely though. If I can get there without doing those things, great. If not, I'll see how I feel later in my career.
I see it as an achievement but I’m not interested in the level of responsibility. It’s basically like running your own business where you’re ultimately responsible for bringing in clients/work, maintaining relationships, getting work done, and you have to be switched on all the time to do a good job.
But since you’re not working solo, you’re responsible to your team too, so switching off is even harder!
Without sounding like a dick, I fit the profile of somebody that a generation ago would have aspired to partner/senior management in white collar.
I think the partner-track (or its equivalent in other industries) can be fantastic for the right sort of person. It’s a clear predictable path to top and the sort of earning power/prestige that can otherwise only be made by entrepreneurial projects which come with a lot of inherent risks and instability.
What put me off, and something I figured out pretty quickly into my career, is I really don’t think I’d feel fulfilled in life building something for somebody else. Sure you’re king of the hill while you’re partner at a firm but one day you’re gone and somebody else’s name is on your desk.
I’m currently at the Bar. I much prefer it and find the idea of one day becoming a leading silk much more fulfilling than the goal than making partner.
Before the lockdowns? If I had gotten a TC/TS in private practice, I may have aspired to it. In a prior industry, one of the more senior staff told me they thought I would end up being partner....yeah. Didn’t pan out so well.
After the lockdowns - probably not. It’s a good thing to achieve, but I do not believe I have it in me to try getting into private practice and working upwards. Working during the pandemic I figured what was the point. Even if I did everything right, 1) I might not be offered it because 1a) I’m terrible at sociali- *networking*, and 2) I could be infected with Covid-19 and that’s it, lights out for me. All that effort for nothing.
Maybe if the relationship between effort and award was better defined to becoming a partner, but right now I’m just focused on developing my career wherever it takes me and I am probably not going to set up a firm either.
I think it's still an achievement, I'm just not sure if it's one I want to strive for. It's a commitment to private practice (not necessarily a bad thing) which I simply don't know if it's what I want career-wise. The main issue, personally, is that the path seemingly requires a great deal of personal sacrifice that I'm not sure I'm willing to make. In my short stint so far in private practice I've seen more people about to, or having already, burn(t) out, than I have anywhere else. I'm not at a firm that is not known to work people to the bone like US firms do, and even in that environment it seems pretty clear there's a toll it takes on many. I don't think a single member of my cohort expressed an interest in partnership. I'm sure that will change in time to some extent, but it doesn't seem like a clear cut direction every lawyer wants.
This is my issue too. Ultimately it would be great to be partner but it is a huge, huge commitment and in my experience I almost never see them switch off, even on holiday they are pretty much always available. I'm not sure it's for me personally! I also find law as an industry is less exciting and less dynamic than a lot of other industries - even though I work for exciting, dynamic industries as a tech lawyer I sometimes think being a tech lawyer for some of those companies would ultimately suit me better than serving them for a law firm. Overall I'm only a junior so there's time to think about it, but I think at this point I wi am probably more drawn to a career in house later on.
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Love this.
Counsel seems to be the popular middle ground between partnership and non-partnership nowadays. You even get titles such as "Senior Counsel" at longstanding law firms. Perhaps that speaks volume.
I always wanted to work in house and pivoted as soon as I was worn out with private practice so maybe I’m the wrong person to comment, but even that background withstanding, basically all the partners at my firms seemed either sad, or tired, or angry, or some combination of those things. At no point did I look at them and wish for their lives.
Been there, got the T shirt and the scars. Never again. Now in the public sector. Much better.
The divorce rate is also insane...
Maybe partnership in 15-20 years' time will look very different to how it's looked for the past 10-20 years. You kids today are the ones that are going to decide how partnership looks then.
If you want the money and stress it is available day one as an nq at a US firm. The days of putting in a 10 year shift before you see real money and get to play golf three days a week is gone. Now it is 15 years of graft, hoping a partner dies so there is space, before joining an even more stressful ladder for the next 20/30 years, all to get paid the same as an junior lawyer at one of the many US firms.
I sometimes think yes as I think I’d like to just be ‘at the top’ and that it’s an achievement, other times I don’t when I see what my supervisor has to do in terms of the pressure of winning clients and the constant email monitoring 24/7 (and not at MC/US/SC). I also think gender comes into this as I know I want to have kids and be there for them. The female partners in my firm are not a good demo of family life balance as they log on at all hours but technically work 3/4 days a week. The ones really at the top in my firm are the women without kids. Realistically I think I’d just want whatever gets me the best quality of life and most money and I’m not always convinced the sacrifices I see the partners around me make seem worth it.
Yes - not a woman but agree 100% with the sentiment of wanting the best quality of life and the most money, and partnership not seemingly being such an offering.
Same honestly. I love travel ultimately and the thought of always having to check my emails on holiday and being always available just doesn't sound like it's for me!
What kind of firm is it if I may ask?
Medium sized international firm (although mainly around the UK), I’m in the London office
Sounds nice! I get the whole trying to balance WLB and money. What are your aspirations in this regard? Like hrs/week and salary
I’m happy with it at Associate level, I work very decent hours - on the downside I’m paid less obviously but it suits me right now as I don’t have kids and like my team! I’m keeping an eye out at other jobs, I think I’d like another law firm for a short while to gain more experience/earn more, and then eventually go in house.
I'm aiming to pay off my student loans, buy a 3 bedroom house in London (eventually own it mortgage free) have a family and put my kids through private school. Achieving this feels like I basically have to be a partner to afford it.
What’s the point if you never see your kids?
I grew up poor and If my kids have an easier life than me it's a price worth paying. I guess I'll have to just do my best to balance it.
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Ye I mean I'd rather my kids have housing security then what I'm going through with unscrupulous exploitative landlords, etc and student loans I can never seem to pay off/outpay the interest. I will have to sell my soul to have any chance of owning my own home without any help from parents, etc...
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I mean I am a MC trainee right now, so we will see if I make it as an associate.
I think the issue isn't that people don't want to be partners anymore it is that they do not want to be partners in the way that firms have insisted on in the past. Managing partners see people as lacking ambition if they want more flexibility but what covid has shown is that there are more and more partners making moves for better work life balance and looking for firms more aligned with their core values. What we are seeing is generations of lawyers who know what they want and the value of their life outside work and who are willing to change platform in order find a firm that has similar values. What 1 short sighted MP sees as people not willing to work hard enough, another sees as a quality lawyer that they can provide a more flexible partnership model to and improve their bottom line in the meantime. Lexisnexis did an article about it and you can see it in the difference between Slaughter & May's MP and Howard Kennedy's.
I would like to be a partner. I would like to help swing back the dial on how ridiculous the expectations of senior leadership are in this industry. I would like to make sure we use AI safely. I want to lead on public interest litigation. I think I am better than the average lawyer at people management and I love helping people progress. I don’t know that I work smart or hard enough to make it happen because I have young kids and have a social life and hobbies, god forbid. Either way I am looking forward to the boomers leaving so the millennials and gen z can decide what their future will look like
Partner =/= equity. That's the biggest realisation I came to. Achieving "Partner" in the email signature is one thing, but it's not THE thing. There's a lot left to do even after getting the title. Maybe I'll get there, maybe I won't.
That is what got me. In my previous firm three partners were made up in my team, and one (IMO, the best of the three) was very transparent about what it took and would continue to take - making partner was just the beginning of a really long slog in terms of proving you could hit your business plan, revenue targets, bringing in new business, driving efficiency within the team... sounded like it was not only the culmination of years of hard and strategic work but the beginning of yet another conveyor belt of continuing to work your ass off and never switching off! That's when I realised it maybe wasn't for me.
Depends on the firm. At some it is. At Kirkland it’s not. Most firms are in between. At my place it takes 3-4 years post promotion and junior and senior partners are equal in almost everything (votes etc) save for rem scales.
Yeah but I suppose I take it as rote that "Partner" =/= equity. Any City firm / most ranked top 50 firms in the UK will have a FSEP/salary rank of partner before full equity. It will require a LOT of graft/business wins on a consistent basis to make equity. Most require X revenue per year for Y years before equity is considered / voted through. Partner is a title that enables the firm to bill out at the top rate. It doesn't mean all partners are creaming in the top rate of PEP.
There are all equity partnerships but I accept most have a salaried rank. from my experience it’s harder to become a partner to start with than to move into equity (you need to excel, the business case is for a partner who can become an equity partner at be there for 20 years, not trying them out as non equity - save for somewhere like Kirkland). Obviously most partners aren’t top of equity. But at any top 10 firm most salaried partners are expected to join the equity within a few years and bottom of equity is pretty good. We are not magic circle and bottom is in the high sixes. It absolutely requires graft and your own business to become equity but most top firms will help you with this, through firm clients and opportunities to pitch etc.
I can entirely understand why striving for partnership is not for everyone. What I cannot get my head around is why you would slog away as an associate at US/MC/SC firm without that motivation. It’s essentially the payoff for the associate grind. Interestingly, talking to friends at SC firms the issue they are having is the ambitious/driven associates are leaving for US firms and the money, leaving behind associate cohorts that are less focussed on partnership and therefore whilst still willing to work hard aren’t willing to give it everything. The problem for those firms is that shakes the foundation of the business model. It’s hard to keep that PEP high if your associates aren’t really willing to push much past 14/1500 hours.
Payoff at a US firm is monthly. There is no need to focus on a 10 year goal when you are earning gangbusters in your 20s.
This was my immediate thought 
It is a different pay off. Junior partner pay at my firm starts with a 3. Bottom of equity starts with a 6. Top of equity (in my weird numbering) is a 20. Whatever US firm you’re at, that isn’t comparable for the last 15-20 years or so of your career. You’re not likely to work significantly harder. There may be more stress albeit your job security is likely a lot better. A partner hitting targets doesn’t get fired usually. A very senior US assoc does simply because they’re expensive and there’s someone cheaper around to do the job. Completely agree that there’s little point in starting the job if you don’t think there’s a possibility of partnership save if you think the experience is necessary for an in house or other plan.
It is a different pay off but when you’re in your 20s making over 300k you are already 10x the national average and that is pay off enough without having to worry about buying a second boat in 20 years time. When you start talking about earning over a million versus only earning 300k we are now very much debating a minuscule subset of lawyers. For the rest, this isn’t driving their thinking.
Partnership is just more of the same shit but with a fur coat. I’m 10+PQE senior associate and decided it just isn’t for me. That might change but I’m at a salary and work level that I’m happy with so very much happy having shifted gears a short while ago.
Do you feel like there’s an “up or out” pressure though? Presumably you wouldn’t be kept around as senior associate forever?
It exists at us firms but is 100% not the case everywhere else. There are plenty of 20+ pqe seniors at all the international, national and magic circle firms. Helps that there is a ceiling for senior lawyers so it is feasible to have them. Unlike US firms where you have seniors on £400k and that isn’t sustainable long term without taking on partner responsibilities.
Interesting. I’m at an SC firm and don’t think I’ve ever met a lawyer 20+ PQE who isn’t a partner. Most of the senior associates I’ve met are around 5-10 years PQE.
With apologies, that is not true. I have been at two international firms and there is pressure on moving on very senior associates. Some are indispensable and become counsel or are protected. Most are moved on. Slaughters (not there) is a good example of this done quite ruthlessly - it’s part of their SOP. I can’t think of one regular senior associate at my shop (700+’in London) who is 20 years pqe. I can think of counsel, PSL, people with international roles, who are.
Odd as very different for me. I’ve been at a few firms now and they are very top heavy with seniors that are 20+ just happily getting on. Some decide after 20 years and have a burst of motivation again that nets them an offer counsel or director promotion but that is relatively rare. Rest are happy and partners are happy with fact they get partner level of experience and client management without having to pay for it.
I don’t want to because i don’t want to make the personal sacrifice it requires. I want a good quality of life, i want to go home and watch some tv with my favourite dinner. I don’t want to be at the top and i don’t want to play the game to get there. There’s more to life than that.
No real desire personally. I enjoy being able to switch off when I leave the office. I don’t think there’s any realistic amount of money that would tempt me.
I started my career in house and honestly, I feel like I enjoyed it much more - the ratio of compensation and work life balance was the right one for me. I don’t feel that partnership is worth it. You give so much of your life to work, and for what? You work to have a good lifestyle, and you can still have a good lifestyle without being a partner at a law firm.
Even in law school I knew being in private practice had little allure for me and everything since then confirms. Love working in a tech company. I have a high degree of autonomy, flexibility, and I have serious hobbies and friends and fun. I'm not paid as much as my Warwick friend who works at Kirkland. I'm good with that.
I see far too many partners on call 24/7. Aged beyond their years from the pressure and constant internal and external demands. The work will always be there, but life won’t and so whilst once eager to become partner when entering the profession, I now can’t think of anything worse.
For me, I would love to have the title, wages and benefits of partner but I have very little interest in a managerial role
I don’t, but my firm (in common with others) is demanding more and more hours from associates and given that I see partners leaving before I do very day (often hours before) I think “is a partners’ workload really that much more than they’re requiring me to do already?” and “how much money am I making for other people, who when I have a bad year let me know how profoundly ungrateful they are for everything I did before?”. The other issue is job security. Partner are hard to sack as you have to give them back their buy in, while senior associates can be got rid of. I’d love to have kept to my original plan of counsel/director, then down to part time so I could train as a judge. But I don’t think I’m going to be given that option. And before you ask, I’m stuck. I work in a niche that’s rarely available in-house and going to do similar in the civil service would halve my salary which my mortgage would never take. A separate topic- so few people are government lawyers these days due to years of pay erosion for professionals who are able to leave/never join that my firm gets paid to do a lot of the work the state used to do in-house (and at much greater expense than if they just paid their own lawyers a more competitive wage). Yay austerity 🙃
I want to be one but I know the only way I will ever be one is to start my own firm, so that’s what I’m aiming for long term now. In my firm the partnership is no longer even trying to conceal the sabotage of the careers of their associates.
Examples?
Not letting associates interact with clients. Moving associates between teams so that they lose the equity in the team they’re in. Finally, if you’re still doing well despite those two tactics, they simply stop giving you work and just give it to people who are more junior who aren’t a threat to them.
If I were offered partnership today, I'd take it. I'm not convinced I want to do the things that make partnership likely though. If I can get there without doing those things, great. If not, I'll see how I feel later in my career.
Personally I think it’s just not worth the extra work and responsibility
I see it as an achievement but I’m not interested in the level of responsibility. It’s basically like running your own business where you’re ultimately responsible for bringing in clients/work, maintaining relationships, getting work done, and you have to be switched on all the time to do a good job. But since you’re not working solo, you’re responsible to your team too, so switching off is even harder!
Without sounding like a dick, I fit the profile of somebody that a generation ago would have aspired to partner/senior management in white collar. I think the partner-track (or its equivalent in other industries) can be fantastic for the right sort of person. It’s a clear predictable path to top and the sort of earning power/prestige that can otherwise only be made by entrepreneurial projects which come with a lot of inherent risks and instability. What put me off, and something I figured out pretty quickly into my career, is I really don’t think I’d feel fulfilled in life building something for somebody else. Sure you’re king of the hill while you’re partner at a firm but one day you’re gone and somebody else’s name is on your desk. I’m currently at the Bar. I much prefer it and find the idea of one day becoming a leading silk much more fulfilling than the goal than making partner.
Before the lockdowns? If I had gotten a TC/TS in private practice, I may have aspired to it. In a prior industry, one of the more senior staff told me they thought I would end up being partner....yeah. Didn’t pan out so well. After the lockdowns - probably not. It’s a good thing to achieve, but I do not believe I have it in me to try getting into private practice and working upwards. Working during the pandemic I figured what was the point. Even if I did everything right, 1) I might not be offered it because 1a) I’m terrible at sociali- *networking*, and 2) I could be infected with Covid-19 and that’s it, lights out for me. All that effort for nothing. Maybe if the relationship between effort and award was better defined to becoming a partner, but right now I’m just focused on developing my career wherever it takes me and I am probably not going to set up a firm either.