Credit: Daniel Liévano The Much-Maligned Nonequity Tier Keeps Growing. Is That Such a Bad Thing?
Experts and observers have long raised red flags about a growing, and perhaps bloated, nonequity tier. But as firms notch record success in the pandemic and the nonequity tier keeps growing, have those fears been overblown?
April 20, 2021 at 09:30 AM
8 minute read
Throughout 2020, Big Law firms were said to be "cleaning house": pushing out unproductive partners so they could pay top earners more and tidy up their expense sheet as the pandemic raged and business development costs promised to return in 2021.
What data are you leveraging to sell strategy internally? Get the Am Law 100 data exclusively with Legal Compass. Yet the nonequity tier, long viewed as a common target in these efforts in part because of the fixed costs and salaries of an income partner, grew roughly 6% last year among the Am Law 100. Average nonequity compensation across the Am Law 100—the aggregate salaries of a firm's income partner tier—jumped 9.2%, from $92.5 million to $101.1 million.
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