Over the years, the way profits are distributed among partners has changed. This shift has given rise to a hidden risk: the erosion of the partner who props up the firm\u2019s structure without being counted among its star performers<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Compensation systems for partners in law firms have been quietly transforming for years. The lockstep system has often been so heavily managed that it is no longer a lockstep. The \u201ceat-what-you-kill\u201d system has been so softened that it is no longer pure individualism. Both are converging toward the same point\u2014profit sharing\u2014driven by the dispersion of profitability among partners, lateral mobility, and, now, artificial intelligence. But that convergence comes at a cost that no one calculates: the erosion of the partner who acts as a \u201cgood citizen\u201d or, in Professor DeLong\u2019s words, the \u201cB-player\u201d\u2014the partner who doesn\u2019t appear in the rankings but who sustains the structure. Moving too quickly toward profit sharing without protecting that \u201cB-player\u201d is to trade a problem of retaining stars for a problem of the organization\u2019s silent collapse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There are transformations taking place in law firms without anyone formally declaring them. There is no press release, no name change for the model, no speech by the managing partner announcing a new era. Simply, one day the firm has a compensation system different from the one it had five years earlier, even though it continues to call it by the same name.<\/p>\n\n\n\n