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Thread: Salaries
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Old 06-28-2004, 10:15 AM   #4
baltassoc
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Join Date: Mar 2003
Location: The City That Reads
Posts: 2,385
I'm not quite a 9th year (5th year), but here's what it would take me to move:

Exceed my current salary by 8-10%, with a sincere promise to reexamine my salary within six months if business / work quality merited this (but this is a potential pitfall - if the reevaluation doesn't lead to a raise, your associate is going to be irritated). If the associate doesn't seem happy where she is, the evaluation promise isn't necessary.

Provide adequate benefits. Yours are adequate, although you don't spell out the insurance benefits, in particular the associate's portion. Everyone expects to pick up some portion, but it makes a big difference to the bottom line and we are aware of that. When I changed jobs the difference in the associate portion was $300 a month in my favor, which I saw the same way as being paid $3600 more a year. Also, parking. If it's not free in your building, and she has free parking now, adjust accordingly. In my case it was again $150 a month in my favor when I moved, but if I were to return to my old firm, they would have to pony up an extra $5k a year over the 10% salary increase above to get me back (not that I would go back).

The percentage of billing is a great idea, and very attractive, but be prepared to live with your promise or you will have a disgruntled employee. Obviously, if you make it part of a written offer of employment, you will have to live up to it. But some (small) firms also make vague promises of this nature to associates in the guise that a percentage of billing will be considered in bonuses; those associates get very disgruntled when the managing partner decides he needs a new Porsche more than he needs to share profits. This fortunately has not happened to me, but it has to a couple of friends. Also, make sure you are prepared to show the figures to your "associate," who's now going to be a lot more like a partner. I didn't care about the books when I was an associate as long as I got my salary and bonus, but if I'm getting a percentage of billing you better believe my nose is going to be in the firm's finances. I only mention this because many firms are reluctant to open that information to non-partners.

Looking at the compensation another way, I've always been fond of the rule of threes as roughly matching the intuitive expectations: total her expected revenue, then take 1/3 for her salary, 1/3 for overhead, support and benefits and 1/3 for you. It's a rule of thumb with a lot of flexibility, but if these numbers get too far out of wack, you need to reexamine the situation. If her portion is too low, she won't be around for long. Even if she doesn't figure it out according to the rule, she'll know it intuitively.
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