Don't Just Shame Firms Based On Profits Per Partner -- Consider Leverage
Stop using PPP to shame firms.
Behind every great woman is a team of fungible associates…
Let’s take a second to think about this MoneyLaw flurry from the perspective of the partners. While we applaud all the associates (and the associates of the future still in school) making bank over the last couple weeks, consider the partners who — directly or indirectly (depending on how the firm is structured) — voted themselves a pay cut to finance the associates’ dreams.
We’ve focused a bit on the profits per partner of the firms dragging their heels on salary increases, but that figure doesn’t quite capture the decision calculus of the partners. For that, you have to consider leverage.
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After all, two partners may have the exact same share of the profits, but a partner who has to finance the $20K raises of 1.9 associates is in a much better boat than the partner paying for 4.5 associates. Obviously being highly leveraged has other advantages, but the point remains that using PPP alone to shame partners misses a key factor.
So one would assume that the more leveraged the firm, the less likely — PPP being equal — they would be to rush into a salary raise. This is all, obviously, overly simplistic, but it’s a decent tool to paint a rough sketch.
Using the top 50 of ATL’s Power 100 Law Firm Rankings, here are the remaining firms yet to raise salaries post-Cravath and their associate-to-partner ratio (for some firms, a ratio was unavailable, so I had to approximate based on other data — take an appropriate grain of salt with those figures marked with a “~”):
| Firm Name | Attys to Equity Partner |
| Alston & Bird | 4.3:1 |
| Fish & Richardson | ~2.3:1 |
| Greenberg Traurig | 4.4:1 |
| Jones Day | 1.9:1 |
| Kilpatrick Townsend | 2.6:1 |
| K&L Gates | 5.7:1 |
| Perkins Coie | 3.7:1 |
| Reed Smith | ~4.4:1 |
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And this shows us… well, actually not a whole lot. While it certainly goes a long way toward explaining why partners at K&L Gates and Greenberg Traurig are hemming and hawing over this decision — at K&L Gates, where PPP is below $900K, matching Cravath in all offices could cost partners over $100K! — it does relatively little to shed light on what the hell Jones Day’s doing. Especially when you consider the firm hardly has to match in every one of its eighty gillion offices. When you consider that, any given partner is likely on the hook for a fraction of an individual raise.
On the next page, let’s look at the leverage of the full top 50 of the ATL Law Firm Rankings — those that have matched and those that haven’t…
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Law Firm Business Development Is More Than Relationship Building
