Bonus Watch: Clifford Chance
The magic circle firm shakes up its associate bonus scheme…
Dropping the link to billable hours and putting the 40% maximum out of reach to all but the most senior. For everyone else it will break down like this:
6mths-1yr PQE 20%
1.5 yrs PQE+ 30%
A spokesperson for Clifford Chance told The Lawyer: “While billable and investment hours continue to be important, the bonus will not be directly linked to achieving a target number of hours. We’ll weigh a number of factors to ensure a balanced and flexible bonus scheme.”
How that actually works in practice remains to be seen but so far the evidence isn’t compelling when you look at bonuses mechanisms elsewhere. As we’ve said before, we’re sceptical about the diminished transparrency of those other ‘factors’ as compared to PQE and billable hours when it comes to career progression and pay. We look forward to being proved wrong.
April 12, 2010
You should be sceptical, management will be able to look out of the window see how the wind blows and decide accordingly.
April 13, 2010
Associates do not have much choice but to accept their fate at the moment. It will be some time before things swing back their way and they have the luxury of moving firms at the drop of a hat.
April 21, 2010
“While billable and investment hours continue to be important, the bonus will not be directly linked to achieving a target number of hours. We’ll weigh a number of factors to ensure a balanced and flexible bonus scheme.”
Really?
This is code for “instead of giving you an objective, transparent criteria for acheiving a bonus, we are now making the criteria deliberately obscure, so that we have cover when we can’t afford / don’t want to pay the 40% bonus we previously promised you.”