Key Takeaways
Compensation may attract a partner’s attention, but it rarely determines whether a lateral move will succeed over the long term. David Maurer explains how compensation, firm culture and career opportunity work together to shape partner mobility and retention.
- Partners often assess compensation by comparing their contributions and rewards with those of their peers, rather than focusing solely on the highest available offer.
- A firm’s compensation system reveals which behaviors it actually values and whether its incentives support its stated culture and strategy.
- Autonomy, influence, flexibility and meaningful participation in a firm’s direction can outweigh a more lucrative financial offer.
- Mentorship can strengthen retention by helping lawyers build their practices, pursue leadership opportunities and develop deeper ties to the firm.
- Firms that provide transparency around career progression and invest in a shared future with their lawyers are better positioned to attract and retain top performers.
Although compensation often dominates reports on lateral partner and group moves, it is not always the first issue attorneys raise when evaluating opportunities.
Nonetheless, with some firms offering substantial premiums and multi-year guarantees for strategically important lawyers, the current highly competitive lateral market has attracted the attention of partners who might not otherwise have contemplated a move.
Compensation is not just a number. It reflects the value and contributions of a lawyer to their firm and clients. It is a signal that the firm views the individual as aligned with its strategy.
Money inadequately addresses important questions of status, control, support, significance, and meaning. Thus, lawyers evaluate their professional position at the intersection of earning potential, firm culture, and control over their own careers. Each consideration tells a lawyer something about what the firm values and the future it sees for them.
Compensation Is Only the Starting Point
Compensation matters, but less as a headline number than as a point of comparison. Lawyers, especially in Big Law, are generally well paid. In my experience, dissatisfaction most frequently arises from how one’s compensation compares with the perceived contributions and rewards of peers, not from the absolute number. Open compensation systems make comparisons easier.
Many expect partners and groups to join the firm that makes the best monetary offer. My experience demonstrates that the highest offer is not always the right offer. Even in one instance involving a severely undercompensated partner whose initial motivation was financial, the partner ultimately accepted a lower compensation band at the new firm to avoid unrealistic expectations by other partners.
Similarly, a group of litigation partners I represented secured attractive competing offers from two firms. On compensation alone, one offer appeared stronger. The group nevertheless chose the other firm because it offered greater potential to advance the practice, more flexibility on rates, and an environment in which the group would be central to the firm’s strategy.
What factors beyond compensation make a meaningful difference for lawyers switching firms? The factors include influence, access to opportunity, and participation in steering the direction of the firm. In a word, culture.
Compensation Systems Reveal Firms’ Cultures
Every law firm I have ever met with says it has a great culture. What is harder is describing how that culture shows up on a daily basis. Words such as collaboration, collegiality, transparency, flexibility, and entrepreneurial are thrown around without concrete examples of how professionals at the firm treat one another.
What gets rewarded gets repeated. Partners can understand a firm’s culture through examination of its compensation system. The firms best positioned to attract and retain top performers align economic rewards with their stated culture and strategy. When rewarded behavior conflicts with professed values, discontent grows.
In many firms, originations play a part in overall compensation. When a firm has multiple touch points with a major client, the issue arises of who gets origination credit for the work the client gives to the firm. Is it the commercial litigation partner who first wrote a demand letter for the client twenty years ago? Or is it the intellectual property attorney who manages the global trademark and patent portfolio for the client? The answer to that question, and others like it, reveals whether the firm’s stated culture matches its incentives.
An individual lawyer’s compensation may fluctuate over the years. When those fluctuations result from divergence from the behaviors a firm has traditionally claimed to reward, the risk of defections of high-performing lawyers will increase.
Autonomy, Mentorship, and Career Progression
Lawyers are managing their careers more proactively, evaluating opportunities through criteria such as flexibility, autonomy, responsibility, transparency, mentorship, influence, and work environment. Whether a lawyer sees a future at a firm depends on the picture viewed through a broadening lens.
Although the current return-to-office debate is often framed around the number of mandatory days in office, the underlying issues for lawyers are frequently trust and autonomy. Lawyers want to be evaluated on their judgment, client service, and contributions, not simply their physical presence.
Lawyers also want to feel that the firm is investing in a future they have a hand in designing. Few professionals thrive if they believe they are simply a cog in a machine.
Robust mentorship has become a differentiator for firms to attract and retain talent. And it is not only associates who benefit from mentorship. Junior partners learn business development from rainmakers. Established partners look to mentors to help define a path to firm leadership roles. Opportunities to be mentored and to be a mentor are harder to find in a more dispersed environment.
Mentorship not only signals investment by the firm in the future of its lawyers; it can also deepen a lawyer’s connection to the firm. In a market where lateral opportunities are highly visible, that connection matters.
I recently met the leadership of an Am Law 100 firm. A partner who I first met almost 15 years ago was in the meeting. When I first met the individual, the firm had just created a new mentorship program for junior partners who wanted to be future leaders of the firm. That program handed real responsibility to the young partners, provided transparency into the operations and strategy of the firm, and gave the participants access to individuals who had led the firm for years. At the recent meeting, the partner I met years ago was an office managing partner, heavily involved in building the firm, and had a thriving practice. Given the investment by the firm in the partner, I doubt they would ever consider leaving the firm.
Mentorship may not appear on a paycheck, but it is the type of investment that pays dividends for years.
Like mentorship, transparency regarding career progression has become an important part of a firm’s talent strategy. The prospect that a lawyer might make partner and then, if the stars align, eventually become an equity partner can feel quite opaque. Firms that engage with mid-level associates and junior partners about requirements for the next step, how to reach it, and who will help them along the way provide the clarity needed to design a future together. That shared future is stickier than the compensation that goes along with it.
Looking Ahead
Law firms that compete effectively for talent recognize how compensation, culture, and career advancement are entangled. They avoid rewarding behavior that could undermine carefully built cultures. Just as importantly, they work with lawyers to chart a path toward success that serves both the individual and the firm.
From my perspective, the best outcome for a lawyer considering a move is to find a fit that sticks, whether that means remaining with the current firm or joining a new platform. Three questions help frame that decision: Does the compensation system reward the behaviors that drive success and sustain the culture? Does the firm’s culture operate in practice as leadership describes it? And is there a credible, achievable path to the career the lawyer envisions?
