Welcome & Opening Remarks with Our Think-Tank Facilitator

Timothy B. Corcoran, Principal
Corcoran Consulting Group, LLC

Rethinking Compensation as a Driver of Change, Not a Lagging Indicator

• Discuss how law firms can leverage compensation as a forcing function to drive positive change and adaptations in partner behavior
• Learn how to align incentives with strategic priorities, client needs, and financial goals
• Dive into the perception that compensation is the third rail of law firm management and how to mitigate fear that deviation will be disruptive
• Explore the behaviors that will grow the firm and how to drive and reward these behaviors to avoid elicit behaviors that may benefit the individual partner at the expense of the firm

How to Reward Firm Profitability Particularly in a Non-Hourly Fee Environment

• Discuss the internal struggle between long-standing cultural norms and an evolving data-focused business environment, adapting new ways of analyzing the business
• Take away ideas for adapting compensation and resource allocation strategies to meet a rapidly changing landscape
• Explore results-driven methodologies to provide clients with predictability and cost savings while simultaneously improving firm financial performance
• Hear how law firms can reward profitability and approach compensation by balancing metrics and subjectivity rather than relying solely on production metrics

The Voice of the Client: Helping to Inform the “Satisfaction Metric” as it Pertains to Compensation

• Explore how the pandemic has shifted what matters most to clients and how to incorporate client feedback, client experience, and quality metrics into the compensation equation
• Hear what metrics matter most to clients, how firms define and capture quality, and how this relates back to compensation
• Discuss client retention and how often the firm is rehired, and how to allocate staff and workflow
• Deep dive into the challenge and difficulty of linking client satisfaction to incentives

Managing Expectations: Performance, Culture and Pay Equity

• Examine culture and - whether disregarded or embraced - how it gives meaning to and provides context for the work itself and equates to survival
• Better understand organizational culture and its relationship to bottom-line business success
• Learn the owners’ obligations and how to measure if these obligations are being met
• Explore what it takes to become and maintain a partner in your firm, if associates should expect to be groomed for partnership, and if there are clear guideposts and expectations to get there
• Hear what exceptional performance looks like and conversely, what underperformance looks like
• Discuss primary structural issues that law firms need to address to achieve cultural alignment, enabling leaders to manage expectations while addressing pay equity and performance issues within the firm

Afternoon Session: Application of Concepts What are Firms Doing to Modernize Compensation Criteria, Processes, and Tools?

Many law firm partner compensation plans are outdated. They over-emphasize some contributions while ignoring others. They perpetuate conflicts between what's good for the partner and what's good for the firm. They fail to capture or reward profitability, client satisfaction, or "intangible" contributions that reflect critical responsibilities of owners. Let’s discuss how firms are adapting compensation plans today. This session will be an interactive, hands-on workshop where all attendees are encouraged to participate in peer-to-peer exchange. Given the abundance of content and variety of challenges faced, we will poll participants to determine in what order and to what depth we will cover the following modules for the afternoon portion of the workshop:

• Introductions Open discussion / Objectives

• Structure -- Objective, subjective, open, closed, or all of the above?

• Metrics -- Quantifying the value of intangible contributions, applying weighting to different contributions.

• Origination -- Rewarding business development while maintaining a collegial culture.

• Management Pay -- When and how to reward management roles.

• Tools -- Data and systems for capturing and disseminating performance data.

• Process -- Reducing the annual burden of shareholder distribution.

Closing Remarks / Discussion