Partnership in law firms used to be the holy grail that all lawyers aspired to. Years of hard graft and thankless toil led to the reward and status of becoming a partner. That look of respect and admiration at parties in reply to the question ‘what do you do?’ was what kept many going through the years of photocopying and grunt work. But has the holy grail of partnership become a poisoned chalice?

Not only are there less partner places available, the pieces of the equity cake are getting fewer, smaller and less tasty. They may even become mouldy in future. With more and more mergers, what was a step forward could become a step back or even an ejector seat, jettisoned out of the firm all together.

In a double-dip rollercoaster world, does everyone really want a helping of worry and stress and to sacrifice their lives? The introduction of ABSs means relinquishing the independence that partners have enjoyed for centuries for a dollop of investment with the loss of freedom, increased pressure and accountability that this entails. Managing lawyers can be like herding cats, and ABS may make some feel caged.

The other day I was chatting to a partner who escaped the London legal rat race. She used the analogy of party games for children; musical chairs and pass the parcel to share her perspective of what was happening in the legal profession. For those of you too young to remember such games, musical chairs involves a group of people racing around a group of chairs arranged in a circle with one less chair than the number of people. When the music stops, the person without a chair to sit on is out of the game.

In pass the parcel, a gift is wrapped in many layers of paper, sometimes with small gifts in between the layers to keep the players engaged. The parcel is passed around the group with music playing and when the music stops, the person holding the parcel at the time unwraps a layer. The game ends when all the layers have gone revealing the prize.

In the old days, when the music stopped, the person holding the parcel of partnership would be delighted, the gift a blessing. It took time going through the layers to get to the prize. The mini presents in between the layers used to be a pay rise or an interesting client project, but now they may be ‘you’re lucky to have a job’. By the time you got to the centre of the parcel, through all the layers of wrapping, the prize of partnership looked small and not as appealing as at the start of the game. In fact the prize received might even disappoint compared with the huge perceived size of the prize at the start

Partnership now can feel like musical chairs. Too many are playing the game, impatient for the reward of a seat at the partnership table. The talented younger generation of lawyers are questioning why they have to ‘serve their time’. In musical chairs the loser is the one who has no seat when the music stops.

Perhaps the game’s rules have changed, with those left standing without a seat at the top table feeling free to do something else and maybe get out of the legal game altogether. Often in recruitment, quality candidates are lost because of the time taken for the recruitment process. The same may be true of lawyers that the firm wants to keep.

Has your firm lost quality people because the process takes too long? What are the attitudes to partnership now compared to what they were?

Rachel Brushfield is a career strategist and coach at Energise, and has written widely on the legal profession