Compensation in the legal sector has changed considerably. We have moved from an era of guaranteed remuneration to a balanced, contribution-based model. An attorney’s compensation is no longer tied to a place on the roster. It follows the contribution.
That mirrors the model professional sales organizations have used for decades, where pay is split between a guaranteed base and earnings tied to revenue produced. In a law firm the attorneys are the revenue generators, and it is entirely logical for compensation to reflect it.
A common misstep persists in the offer itself. Most firms lead with the fixed base salary. It is an integral part of the package and only a part of it, and leading with it leaves the candidate with a distorted view of what is being offered. What they need to see is the total target compensation.
At OnBoard Legal we counsel clients to lead with the total target compensation, the sum of the fixed and the variable, in the offer document. That figure is the honest representation of the offer, and it is the number a candidate should be weighing.
It reads as a shift in semantics. It is not. No firm wants to spend the time and the resources on a process only to have the offer declined at the last stage over a number that was never the whole number.
In a competitive market, every advantage is worth taking. A transparent and complete compensation package is one of the cheaper ones.