An overwhelming number of senior solicitors are backing Olswang's radical move to axe annual salary bands for its assistant solicitors.

Seventy-one per cent of the Big Question's panel of 100 law firm partners have given Olswang's move, first reported in Legal Week, their seal of approval.

And 61% of the panel believe Olswang's system, which allows it to sidestep the assistant salary pay war, will become the norm, although most believe it will take time to catch on.

This caution can presumably be explained by the fact the 52% of the panel are at firms that have no plans to change their system of salary banding.

Nigel McEwen, the managing partner of Tarlo Lyons, is among those law firm leaders who do not anticipate moving away from the lockstep. He says the firm already hands out bonuses, which gives it the flexibility to reward high achievers.

But that does not mean to say he believes Olswang has made a mistake. "It may work, but it is going to require very careful management. A lot of time will have to be spent on communication so assistants know why their salaries are different," McEwen says.

And even though his own firm is not changing its pay system, McEwen recognises that it still has work to do in improving the feedback it provides to its staff.

"We do well in terms of telling people that they have performed well. We do not do well enough in terms of telling them where they are falling down," he says.

This caution shines out in the panel's response to a question that focused on the anticipated reaction of assistants to any move to abolish salary bands.

Nearly one in five respondents (19%) said assistants in their firms would be "up in arms" and a further 59% said they would accept such a change grudgingly.
But if most of the responses to the survey can be easily explained, there is one finding that cannot.

When asked if their firms were considering emulating Olswang, 28% of the panel said their firms had already done it.

Penny Terndrup, a director at the recruiters EJ Legal, is baffled by the response, but believes it could reflect the fact that the banding system has already become blurred at the edges.

"It is easy to decide what you want to pay particular people at a particular level," she says, "and then call the gap between the highest and the lowest figure 'a band'.

"Once past about four years, bands become fairly meaningless anyway. The radical move here is calling a spade a spade and being seen to discriminate based on merit, rather than doing it by the back door."