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Muir will speak on Law Practice in the 21st Century:  What It Means for You at the Women Lawyers Alliance annual meeting in Chicago on Friday, May 20.  Muir will review the massive changes that law practice is undergoing globally in this new century and what it means to individual lawyers and their law departments and firms…

The article “Pay Gap Widens at Big Law Firms as Partners Chase Star Attorneys,” published in The Wall Street Journal last week, reported on the increasing spread in partner compensation at large law firms, setting many in the industry talking.  In fact, the article understates the extent of the spread, the factors driving it and the impact that spread is having on both the firms in question and throughout the industry.

As discussed in my CCM audio conference on partnership compensation trends last month, the spread 10 years ago at most firms was 3 or 4 to 1, with partners moving up the pay scale based either on performance or tenure or some combination of the two.  That spread has grown in the last few years to over 20/1 at some firms, more than twice what the WSJ cites, which obviously didn’t find any firms with record spreads willing to fess up publicly.  Unfortunately, many times, thanks to lack of transparency, the partners themselves don’t realize the extent of the spread and therefore aren’t able to tattle. 

Why the increase?Continue Reading Large Firm Spread

The Value Advisory issued a press release today announcing the formation of a veteran group of advisors to provide law firms with strategies and resources that align firm offerings and operations with their clients’ objectives.  At a time of increasing client demands for value at a reduced cost, The Value Advisory works with firms to assess their clients’…

After literally years of bad news, recent reports have sparked a flurry of hope for an uptick in demand for legal services in 2011.  Let’s look at the data for some indication of whether that optimism is justified. 

According to the Citi Private Bank report issued for the first 3 quarters of 2010, while demand in 2009…

One of the more interesting topics that we covered at this week’s audio conference for CCM on Partner Compensation systems are the trends occurring in the types of systems being used–globally, in the US in response to the current market pressures and in the course of an individual firm’s development.

The data on global developments is not well updated. …

Muir and Norman Clark of Walker Clark will be co-presenting a Center for Competitive Management audio presentation on Thursday, January 27, 2011 at 2pm EST entitled "Partner Compensation–Defining the New Normal."  The presentation will cover:

  • Key trends in partner compensation for 2011
  • Common and uncommon compensation plan options
  • Who should evaluate performance and pay?
  • Ways

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Will Meyerhofer is a lawyer who worked at Sullivan & Cromwell before chucking it and getting his MSW to become a therapist. He is also gay. He writes the blog The People’s Therapist and occasionally ties in issues relating to the legal community. His latest entry is about a recent podcast he did with the…

Muir’s “The Unique Psychological World of Lawyers” explores the ways in which the personal style of lawyers differs from that of the majority of Americans and how it effects both what lawyers perceive and how they are perceived.

Muir’s “Emotional Intelligence for Lawyers” reviews the history of the development of emotional intelligence and how it applies to lawyers.

Muir’s “The Importance of Emotional Intelligence in Making Partners” was awarded the Edge International Law Practice Magazine Award for excellence in writing.

Seat-of-the-pants projections by Hildebrandt as to the loss of associate positions over the next 5-7 years were published this fall to much hullabaloo.  By their lights, a very specific 27% of the 65,000 AmLaw200 nonpartner positions, or approximately 17,500, are likely to be cut or recategorized downward under the influence of the current market’s prevailing…