Good partnerships act as teams; they cooperate for the common good of all; less good ones are characterized by the attempt of individuals to assert their individual interests. The difference can be huge: in a case of a firm of 30 professionals, changing their cooperation increased their profit per partner by 200%. If a young partner previously earned approx. 200,000 EURO, after 3 years it was 600,000 € (see picture); all other partners in this law firm earned the same amount. At the same time, the attractiveness of the partnership for outsiders increased, and KAnzlei was better able to keep up with the salary competition.
How was this possible? We attribute this to 3 factors:
1. willingness to engage in a process that makes change possible. We have been working on this with the partnership for some time, because in addition to the structural requirements, there must also be an understanding within the partnership of the differences that need to be taken into account.
2. agreement on a clear system of profit distribution without any component of uncertainty for 3 years. This also meant that no discussion was possible during this period.
3. radical specialisation of all partners in appropriate practice groups, introduction of management teams and better self-observation through optimised controlling
The implementation of these ideas was only possible because everyone immediately joined the new teams, and then implemented the specialisation by handing over as quickly as possible the respective mandates that were not (or no longer) covered by their own specialisation. For the time being, two major specializations were formed:
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- Corporate and Commercial (including labour law, etc.)
- Litigation (incl. commercial criminal law)
The willingness of all partners and internal discussion and reflection is the key to success. This does not only come in monetary, but above all in non-monetary results.
