Has the holy grail of partnership lost its lustre? Sam Kenworthy investigates
The low down
Is partnership in a highly profitable commercial law firm considered the glittering prize it once was? Certainly, the money is often staggering. But across the City, firm leaders are encountering associates who are less willing to make the sacrifices their predecessors did. They want to reach their career goals with their mental wellbeing, and home and family life, unperturbed. In consequence, there is now a record number of non-partner 9PQE+ solicitors working in large law firms. Increased reliance on legal tech and the need for better business management have also demanded the creation of career paths and novel financial incentives to attract and retain professionals with skills in both. In smaller firms, meanwhile, succession planning involves ensuring the demands and financial risks of partnership can be reconciled with other life priorities.
The career of a lawyer has long followed an established trajectory. From trainee (or articled clerk, reaching back into history), through the ranks of associate and senior associate, to ‘of counsel’. Then the holy grail: partner.
This was perceived to be the aspiration of every recently qualified lawyer, which meant firms did not have to worry too much about ensuring their elite juniors would not stray. Those who were not cut out for partnership would fall by the wayside, voluntarily or not. The strongest performers would take their seats at the boardroom table and, if they were very fortunate, be presented with their initialled silver napkin ring.
Now that (boardroom) table has turned. Junior lawyers are no longer universally fixated on making partnership at all costs. The pressures of reaching and then maintaining the standards, and billing requirements, to be a partner at a top-100/global elite firm are ever more daunting.
While the rewards at the top end of the market are eye-watering, there are financial pressures on the way. Solicitors will be paying off student loans at a high rate, just as they are expected to buy into a firm’s equity. And at the age when most successful candidates make partner, many lawyers are also starting a family and buying a home.
According to the annual PwC Law Firms Survey, the average number of non-partners at 9PQE+ among the UK top-100 increased from 93 to 118 between 2020 and 2025, a rise of 26.9%. In the same period, the average total fee-earner headcount across those firms only rose 17.7%. Is partnership becoming less appealing?
Firms that in the past may have been able to rest on their laurels in the belief that the best and the brightest would commit to the partnership track have amended and broadened their career progression options in response. Laura Seiler, director of talent and reward EMEA at Norton Rose Fulbright, says that the firm pays regular attention to the changing targets of its associates. ‘Our business here is partner-led, but we have alternative career paths.’
NRF Transform, for example, is described as a ‘transformation and innovation programme which comprises a multidisciplinary team of lawyers, legal operations consultants, technologists, data and AI specialists and legal project managers’.
The programme was established 10 years ago but has expanded in the last five years, says Seiler. The group is overseen by a partner, but operatives hold a ‘director’ title. ‘We have grown this [NRF Transform] function strategically. It’s driven by a desire to remain competitive and to deliver high-quality innovative services for our clients. Equally, it’s about retaining talent that otherwise may have been misused or misdirected.
‘We ideally want everyone aiming for a leadership role at the outset of their careers, but we also recognise and value those who choose to build long-term careers as technical legal non-partner roles,’ Seiler adds.
‘Junior lawyers are more in control’
Annmarie Carvalho (pictured) walked away from a career in legal practice when she decided that something had to give between pursuing partnership and raising a family. In 2018, she founded The Carvalho Consultancy, which offers career coaching and therapy to professional services businesses.
Carvalho says that 60% of her work is with law firms, running therapeutic support schemes for staff.
‘What I do is look at options with people. Looking at my own career, I decided not to pursue partnership, but I would never tell someone else partnership wasn’t for them.
‘Around your mid-30s, you’re thinking about kids or already have a young family and are looking to get on the housing ladder. Maybe the thrill of working on a big-money case or pulling all-nighters to get deals over the line is starting to fade. That’s when it’s time to rethink what’s important to you.’
That is not to say the solution for everyone is to walk away. Carvalho explains that it is about finding the tools to stay healthily engaged: ‘I don’t know many successful lawyers who are chilled out. They tend to have quick-thinking, fast-processing brains; they are driven and have a hunger to achieve and succeed. It’s almost addictive, you just keep on running. Would a personality like that transition to a slower-paced career? We look at what really drives the individual, where they are happiest and narrow the path to enable them to get there.’
Key to this is setting boundaries early. ‘Junior and mid-level lawyers are more in control of their environments these days, and can make demands related to their own careers,’ says Carvalho.
Top commercial firms acknowledge that not every lawyer is wired for the often onerous business development requirements that partners have to satisfy to be able to stand on their own two feet. While an institutional client base at a top-tier firm is a dream scenario, the concept of a service partner has largely died out.
‘We expect a level of business development from everyone,’ says Karen Stages, chief people officer at Charles Russell Speechlys. Stages cites the firm’s six-year-old internal business school ‘Inspire’ programme. The programme is externally accredited by the Institute of Leadership, and mandatory for every trainee and associate up to four years’ PQE (and opt-in thereafter). What it does is develop commercial acumen, teach client pitching and hone soft skills such as mentoring juniors – all attributes needed to be a successful partner.
While Stages is keen to stress that the programme is not specifically designed to prepare juniors for partnership (‘we don’t gear people towards partnership, we try to make [our people] successful lawyers’, she says), it certainly covers the bases.
Like Norton Rose Fulbright, the firm facilitates a non-partner career option. ‘There are alternative career paths, including knowledge development partners and legal directors. These can be dictated by individual circumstances, for example if someone can’t build a practice or has deep technical expertise in a sector that isn’t a core practice area for the firm,’ says Stages. ‘New partners are obliged to develop a business plan, but it must be aligned with the firm’s strategy.’ So, associates with a penchant for, say, competition law can still carve out a role at Charles Russell Speechlys without the pressure of developing a profitable, standalone practice.
Partnership and pressure go hand in hand. The most stressful periods of any lawyer’s career are the years immediately preceding and following partnership. Those stages are about building a business and client following that will make for a compelling business plan, then carrying through on that plan’s projected billing levels, while also taking on additional responsibilities of team management, departmental and firm-wide strategy input, mentoring juniors and satisfying client demands.
All this often coincides with raising a young family; a task which, of course, usually falls more heavily on women than men.
In the round, dangling the carrot of partnership is no longer the fix-all solution to a demotivated associate. ‘Some seniors are bemused about what will motivate junior lawyers. Juniors, for their part, are less worried about disappointing their superiors by not following the established career path,’ notes Annmarie Carvalho, whose consultancy supports law firms with therapy and coaching (see box).
Firms have picked up on this. ‘We are encouraging more of a feedback culture and supporting people to take ownership of their careers,’ says NRF’s Seiler.
Trowers & Hamlins’ director of HR, Paul Robinson, says: ‘A sea change has been in [the firm’s attitude towards] feedback from associates. In the past, we regarded no feedback as good news, everything must be fine, people must be happy. Now there’s an expectation of feedback.’
As career ambitions diverge, agile working models are proliferating. Lyndon Jennings, account manager at Vario, Pinsent Masons’ in-house alternative legal service provider, notes how this relatively recent phenomenon has evolved. ‘Previously, Vario and other operations like it offered a different career path for typically more senior solicitors who were financially secure and wanted to stay active, frequently in less high-pressure roles. They had the luxury to be able to trade off some responsibility, and security, focus on managing a portfolio, for example, or just to free some of their time to do other things. Now it’s often about seeking out career alternatives much earlier; Gen Z lawyers are looking for greater autonomy and greater flexibility.’
Rather than being shunted into an unwanted practice area and getting stuck there, younger lawyers are recognising the appeal of being a generalist and taking on new roles with different challenges every few months – even if that path will ultimately lead away from partnership.
‘Am I often hearing the statement “I don’t want to make partner” from candidates? No, but it’s implicit in their reasoning. Some see limitations of partnership and the work that’s required to get there and decide to go in a different direction. They’ve seen others getting burnt out at the senior end. Some are built to be rainmakers and deal with all that sitting in the upper echelons of a law firm requires and some are not.
‘Solicitors going freelance are driven by different factors at different levels but it’s people wanting variety, greater flexibility and more control generally.’
Paul Bennett of Bennett Briegal, who advises law firms and other partnerships, notes that the market has also changed outside the top-200: ‘At the smaller end of the market, the 2-10-partner firms with a turnover of £5m or less, the appetite to make partner is less than it was 10-20 years ago. Reasons include, but are not limited to, tuition fee debt, concerns over putting in equity, a young family, becoming homeowners. It’s a financial story.
‘Aspirations [for equity partners] in those firms are personal wellbeing and good work/life balance. But the burden of putting money into the firm along with stricter regulatory requirements, standards of conduct which apply not just to the individual but to the firm as a whole but are borne by the partners, [means] the responsibility is daunting.’
Bennett notes the rise of ‘platform firms’ such as Setfords and Excello Law as a viable alternative. ‘Lawyers on those platforms need to be 5PQE+. They will retain 60-80% of what they bill. This is attractive versus the cost of buying into a partnership. If you get out there and bill, you can make serious money. And you can choose to work three days a week or 40 hours a week.’
What cropped up time and again in interviews for this piece is the need to balance partnership with family. Every firm will (and all interviewed for this piece did) publicly deny that there is an up-or-out policy, where any junior failing to make partner within a certain time will be eased out rather than retained as an increasingly well-remunerated associate or counsel with limited fee-generation capability. (Charles Russell Speechlys was keen to point out that PQE levels for new partners over the last three years have ranged from five to 22.)
It is nevertheless tacitly acknowledged that associates will be eyeing partnership around the 7-11-year PQE mark and that, if that window closes, something is amiss. Recruiters are known to target this demographic for junior partner vacancies.
The spectre of the window closing adds an additional layer of stress, which is another reason why firms have moved beyond the ‘tap on the shoulder’ to guiding candidates down the pathway to partnership.
Norton Rose Fulbright has a ‘special counsel’ platform which all aspiring partners are put on for one to three years. ‘We are pragmatic in our career development conversations,’ says Seiler. ‘We are demystifying the path to partnership.’
Trowers & Hamlins has ‘Pathways’, a development programme for high-performing senior associates. Robinson stresses that being on the programme is no guarantee of partnership, but it is mandatory and valuable in managing expectations. ‘It lays out what is expected of them as partners, and during the programme people have come to us saying they’ve realised partnership is not for them,’ he says. Pathways has a 50% partner elevation rate, and of those who do not make partner, around half stay on in a legal director role.
While some firms will continue to maintain that the best way to retain talent is to make partnership financially irresistible, others are taking a more nuanced approach that includes coaching and mentoring. ‘The best session I ever hosted involved four senior partners opening up to a group about their own struggles through their career, people you just wouldn’t have expected to have suffered like that and be willing to talk openly about it,’ says Carvalho.
Robinson says of Trowers: ‘We have wellbeing programmes specifically for partners and we get the partners to share their experiences. Experiences shared by fellow partners are much more powerful than those coming from third parties.’
While partnership remains the ultimate goal for most lawyers in private practice, especially at the outset of their careers, firms have recognised that there is value in more sophisticated career management strategies. The different worldviews of millennials and Gen Z have helped convince many that, in a traditionally inflexible profession, innovation is key.
Sam Kenworthy is a freelance journalist
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