Lockstep vs. eat-what-you-kill: Joined at the hip?
Legal Week argues, using the apparently unending saga
at Clifford-Chance as a journalistic "hook," that the boundary
zone between the two models is wide and flexible, not narrow and
bright.
Now at one level, this is not news: Pure-as-the-driven-snow
examples of each model are, when one actually looks around, quite
rare. Even Clifford-Chance’s fabled wrestling match
with the issue can be read, in a sense, as teaching that a nuanced
blend is essential and that a Manichean approach is economically
perilous and divisive. And then when it comes to actually
dividing the pie at year-end (or driving markers in the ground
during the year as clients and matters are "claimed" by would-be
originators), things get even murkier. Rarely is a new client
truly bagged by one and only one partner—certainly if you
asked the client they’d almost certainly report that while a personal
relationship with the partner was instrumental at the moment of
selection, the key business rationale driving the choice was a
reliance on the firm’s assets and expertise as a whole.
Moreover, the laundry list of behaviors which management wants
to reward through remuneration includes (or should include) many
having nothing to do with new client origination, such as:
- contributions to practice group management;
- associate recruitment and development;
- lateral recruitment and integration;
- pro bono, civic, and bar association activities; and
- active or leadership roles in firm governance.
Look at that list again and ask yourself what those activities
best correlate with: I would argue, with seniority. So
setting out to be "meritocratic" can intrinsically—and
correctly—introduce a "seniority premium," just like lockstep.
Finally, the article observes, in an exercise in stating the obvious,
that both lockstep and eat-what-you-kill can be done well or badly,
and that it all depends on "what the firm is trying to achieve
and how well it’s applied." To be sure.
I have a more specific theory: I think an emphasis on one
or the other depends on where a firm is in its "lifecycle." A
pure lockstep may be an anchor if you’re just launching a practice,
and a pure meritocracy may destroy a mature, "climax stage" firm. So
the question becomes, where are you? And do you want to stay
there?
You hit it exactly on the firm “lifecycle” point, but then veered off. While every rational system (and even most that are not) attempt to make some accommodation between the 2 extremes, the disputes often hit when a firm is in the lifecycle stage of a new generation of attorneys beginning to see their influence increase as an older generation begins to see their practices level off or decline–or they reach the stage of life where they are scaling back their work. The new generation does not believe that they are being properly rewarded for the business they bring in (often conveniently forgetting the assistance that the older generation of attorneys offered and that the firm itself provided for much of that development). The “old guard” wants to reap the rewards of the years of investment in their own intellectual capital, as well as that of the firm and their investment in that emerging generation of new firm leaders. As the balance of power tips in favor of the emerging leadership over time, the emphasis tends to shift toward a more aggressive “eat what you kill” because that is the way in which the emerging leadership can best take the fruits (or the spoils) for themselves. This is more pronounced as our culture has become increasingly geared toward instant gratification.