Why would you want to triple your equity partnership, as DLA Piper is now on course to do for its non-US business? After all, it flies in the face of a 20-year trend that has seen commercial law firms make up armies of non-equity partners to drive up their profits.
But if you step back a little and reconsider lockstep (or the supposedly ‘merit-driven’ models that look suspiciously lockstep-like on closer inspection) then the calculation totally changes. With a remuneration model that allows you to pay your top people widely varying amounts, then the question becomes: why would you want to keep massed ranks of non-equity partners?
