Firm Pays Associates Less and Partners Equally, Requires Fewer Hours
California intellectual property firm Knobbe, Martens, Olson & Bear is looking to expand without changing its unusual business model.
All of the firm’s partners share equally in profits, the National Law Journal reports in an article reprinted in the New York Lawyer. Associates make below-market pay of $150,000, but the trade-off is better work-life balance. Lawyers at the firm are expected to bill only about 1,640 hours a year.
The 200-lawyer Knobbe Martens recently expanded beyond California with offices in Washington, D.C., and Seattle. Managing partner Steven Nataupsky told the National Law Journal that the firm may open future offices in Boston and Chicago, as well as in foreign locations. Rather than relying on lateral hires to staff new offices, the firm will transfer existing lawyers to the locations.
“Typically, partners who grow up in other firms have very different cultures than us. They don’t tend to fit in well here,” Nataupsky told the publication. “A lot of it has to do with compensation. They’re used to a formula system where they eat what they kill, and we don’t have that.”
William Zimmerman, managing partner of the firm’s Washington office, says the compensation system results in work going to the lawyer best equipped to handle it, rather than to the lawyer who brings in a client.
