City law firms are making equity partnership harder to reach. Should top lawyers look at fee-share instead?

Once upon a time, the career ladder for talented lawyers was a clear, straightforward climb. Education, training contract, qualification, put in the hard work as an associate and then join the lofty ranks of partnership.

Many are now finding the top rungs of that ladder are going missing. City AM were among those pointing out that large law firms are tightening access to their equity partnerships. Though more money is flowing into the legal sector than ever before, the fruits of the success are being restricted to smaller and smaller partnerships.

Why Equity Partnership Is Becoming Harder to Reach at City Law Firms

US-headquartered firms led the charge on introducing a salaried tier to partnership. That is now commonplace across the UK market. This additional layer allows the business to give the ‘partner’ title to high fliers while protecting the exclusivity of the equity pool.

For many salaried partners and senior associates practicing today, equity partnership will be forever inaccessible. Some may not be willing to ‘play the game’ of office politics; others might recognise that what was once the ultimate goal is now just one in a growing range of options for talented lawyers with big ambitions.

One of the best parts of my role as COO at Excello Law is meeting those talented lawyers, explaining the consultant model and helping them realise the options available to them. One of the things I hear most from lawyers making this move is how much it matters to have direct access to the people running the business, not layers of committees and approval chains. That’s something we’ve built the firm around. As one of the first fee-share firms in the UK, we have been proud to support entrepreneurial, driven practitioners look at the horizon ahead of them, do the maths on what they could expect to earn for the rest of their career and decide to take the plunge into building their own legal practice.

Rather than waiting years, or decades, for a share of profits that may never materialise, lawyers can become consultants and take home a substantial proportion of what they themselves generate.

Transparency is central to the model: the effort that a lawyer puts in will directly translate to the money they take home. There’s no opaque lockstep system and no need to spend energy dealing with internal politics when you could be spending it on your clients. That doesn’t mean cutting corners. Our consultants operate within a compliance and quality framework that gives clients the same confidence they’d expect from a City firm, without the overheads that come with it.

It would be disingenuous to suggest this path suits everyone. We are proud to say that Excello is selective in our recruitment, only bringing on board senior lawyers we know will be a good fit for our carefully curated network. Where other firms prioritise growth over all other metrics, we focus on the success of the individual. 97% of our lawyers rate the support they receive from the firm positively, which tells us the infrastructure is working, not just the pitch.

What Senior Lawyers Really Want: Autonomy, Flexibility and Earning Power

We’re also seeing a generational shift in what lawyers actually want. The post-pandemic reassessment of working life hit the legal profession as hard as any other sector. Autonomy, flexibility and genuine reward are no longer nice-to-haves that can be traded away in exchange for the promise of partnership.

Lawyers aren’t losing their taste for hard work. On the contrary, driven individuals are recognising that a 9-to-5 (or longer) day in an office, five days a week, isn’t necessary for a successful practice. Clients don’t want to pay for expensive overheads and administration, they want expert advice from a skilled lawyer they can trust.

A fee-share structure, paired with an extensive platform of support, compliance infrastructure and a quality referral network, can offer everything lawyers need without them having to sacrifice earning potential in return. Because consultant lawyers aren’t competing for the same partnership slots or billable hour targets as the person next to them, there’s none of the zero-sum dynamic that shapes so much of City firm culture. Our lawyers refer work to each other because it benefits both of them, not despite each other.

For more and more high performers in today’s legal industry, looking beyond equity partnership isn’t a step down. When you strip away the prestige signalling and look at the numbers, lawyers at fee-share firms are often earning more, working on matters they’ve chosen and retaining the kind of direct client relationships that make the job rewarding in the first place. It’s telling that 97% of our lawyers stay with us. People don’t stick around a model that isn’t working for them.

If you’re an experienced lawyer weighing your options, we’d welcome a confidential conversation. Find out how the Excello model works or speak to one of our consultants about their experience.

Article by Jo Losty, COO, Excello Law

Email [email protected] for more information.