While its Magic Circle peers have made significant progress with modifying their locksteps to attract and retain talent, Clifford Chance (CC) is dragging its feet on implementing proposals voted in nearly two years ago.
In 2015 CC made amendments to its pay structure to allow leading partners to go up to 130 points, while plateau partners, as well as teams and geographies contributing less may be brought down and capped at 70. The ladder previously ranged from 40-100.
At the end of last year, managing partner Matthew Layton conducted a review to determine where partners should sit on the lockstep.
Proposals over points allocation have been put forward by the firm’s executive leadership group to the firm’s partnership council and will ultimately be voted on by the partnership. The process is expected to be finalised in the coming months. However, one partner close to the review told Legal Business: ‘There is still a lot of fluidity around the changes, if any will be implemented at all. That’s not guaranteed.’
While there have been reports that entire offices in western Europe will be capped at 70 points, or the process will involve individual ‘judgement days’ for partners, the firm’s global corporate head Guy Norman disputes this.
He said: ‘The most important thing for us, whatever we do as a firm, is collaboration – the way we work together and make sure clients are introduced to the right people for the right jobs. It is therefore all the more important that we encourage a culture of openness, collaboration and discourage individual financial metrics.’
While rivals such as Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer and Allen & Overy have made significant hires recently by going off lockstep, three CC partners said they believed that the ‘super points’ mechanism had not yet been used.
‘CC has always been a more conservative, slow-moving firm. But as they lose valuable partners like Patrick Sarch, they have had no other choice but to be decisive and move quicker with these changes,’ said one rival City firm leader.
They added: ‘A lot of the practice areas that have taken off in recent years were once fringe, like private equity. These were regarded beneath the salt and the Magic Circle was not making partners up in them. That leads to laterals, and laterals are less likely to put up with a rigid lockstep as you have to pay them good money.’
georgiana.tudor@legalease.co.uk