Great article. I’m at one of those single-tier firms (where they do all the differentiation among non-partners in the counsel title) and I often wonder if it would be better to just have NEPs, at least for the attorneys 9-13 years out without a book but who could stand to have the title to help generate it.
At this point the title has been degraded a bit so unless you’re a pure single-tier lockstep firm (and there are so few of those that exist these days), why not have NEPs, you know?
Exactly. I think that in the past, when maybe there was some extra cachet associated with being a single-tier firm, one could argue that the reputational benefit to the firm of being single-tier outweighed the reputational hit to individual lawyers who had the counsel rather than partner title.
But at this point—now that so many super prestigious firms are two-tier, and the partner title has been degraded somewhat, as you note—it makes a ton of sense to have NEPs (subject to the caveats noted in my article about managing them well).
David, you have boiled a tricky subject down to its core, as usual. But, you left off the other piece of the discussion: those attorneys who carry the title of Counsel. Not the 10 or 12th year post law school attorney, I an talking about what I call for lack of a better term "grown up Counsel". At some firms they get thrown into the mix in addition to NonEquity Partners while at others, the stand in their stead.
This makes the whole discussion about the NonEquity Partner class even more complicated as you try to convince someone with th NE Partner title to move to a firm that uses Counsel titles instead and convince them that it isn't a demotion!!
Oh my goodness, so true! Even if there's no functional difference, that "partner" title carries value—especially in a status-obsessed profession.
I suspect an empiricist could probably do a study to quantify the monetary value of the title. All things being equal, how much extra (in monetary or other benefits) does it take to get someone to move from a firm that uses the "partner" title to an otherwise equivalent position at a firm that uses the "counsel" title?
Great article. I’m at one of those single-tier firms (where they do all the differentiation among non-partners in the counsel title) and I often wonder if it would be better to just have NEPs, at least for the attorneys 9-13 years out without a book but who could stand to have the title to help generate it.
At this point the title has been degraded a bit so unless you’re a pure single-tier lockstep firm (and there are so few of those that exist these days), why not have NEPs, you know?
Exactly. I think that in the past, when maybe there was some extra cachet associated with being a single-tier firm, one could argue that the reputational benefit to the firm of being single-tier outweighed the reputational hit to individual lawyers who had the counsel rather than partner title.
But at this point—now that so many super prestigious firms are two-tier, and the partner title has been degraded somewhat, as you note—it makes a ton of sense to have NEPs (subject to the caveats noted in my article about managing them well).
David, you have boiled a tricky subject down to its core, as usual. But, you left off the other piece of the discussion: those attorneys who carry the title of Counsel. Not the 10 or 12th year post law school attorney, I an talking about what I call for lack of a better term "grown up Counsel". At some firms they get thrown into the mix in addition to NonEquity Partners while at others, the stand in their stead.
This makes the whole discussion about the NonEquity Partner class even more complicated as you try to convince someone with th NE Partner title to move to a firm that uses Counsel titles instead and convince them that it isn't a demotion!!
Oh my goodness, so true! Even if there's no functional difference, that "partner" title carries value—especially in a status-obsessed profession.
I suspect an empiricist could probably do a study to quantify the monetary value of the title. All things being equal, how much extra (in monetary or other benefits) does it take to get someone to move from a firm that uses the "partner" title to an otherwise equivalent position at a firm that uses the "counsel" title?