Usually, I have a pretty good sense of which articles on legalweek.com will garner attention, but I confess I didn't foresee a low-key article about Ashurst articulating an expectation that partners should be doing at least 50 hours of work a week gaining the audience it did.

In many ways the stance, outlined in a 15-second burst at the firm's partnership conference last November, would seem an entirely innocuous statement of fact for those taking on a gig currently paying £362,000 to £940,000 a year.

So as best I can tell, the controversy generated by the story lies between two conflicting views of what partnership (and by extension being a City lawyer) should mean.

On one side, you have the traditionalist view that emphasises common values, selectivity, peer pressure and aligned interests to achieve the required high performance and consensus. Those still espousing this rosy view of partnership pine for an era in which a raised eyebrow by a Boardman or Cheyne was all that was required to steer wayward partners back on track.

The other view is that you need to be increasingly prescriptive with partners, to spell out in substantial detail what is required of a senior lawyer in many aspects of their working life – an approach that needs to be backed by tools like appraisals and formal training.

Of course, striking the balance with a partnership in being clear about what is expected without putting the backs of your fellow shareholders up is fiendishly difficult – but I'm with Ashurst on this one.

For one, the huge expansion of the industry over the last 20 years means that the traditionalist model no longer cuts it for firms with hundreds of partners and proliferating foreign offices. The reality of what it means to be a partner has fundamentally changed, just as it did in previous generations when lockstep-derived models were introduced to manage law firm expansion.

There are a handful of firms like Slaughter and May, Travers Smith and Macfarlanes that, due to their particular business models, can maintain a partnership still defined as much by its culture as by its deed. But even these firms have changed considerably from a purist view, and for most law firms that day has long gone. Tough market conditions over the last four years have inevitably also changed the key virtues for a partner.

As the cliche goes: when growth is hard to come by, the value of the finders will increasingly trump that of the minders and the grinders. Those who can win business and manage the top clients are the true owner-managers in a law firm; becoming one requires a lot of sacrifice to go with the huge financial rewards. That is one underlying truth about partnership that doesn't change.