Travers Smith is introducing merit-based pay for its more senior associates, as well as one-off payments for those with "disruptive" work patterns, following a review of associate remuneration at the firm.

The results of the review, which has taken place over the last 10 months, will see the firm retain its traditional lockstep structure for junior associates, while bringing in increased flexibility for associates with more than six years' post-qualification experience.

The firm will also consider making one-off payments to associates whose patterns of work have seen them required to put in unusually demanding amounts of time.

Travers' appraisal system will stay the same, while the firm will also continue to pay out a firmwide bonus. The firm has also adjusted its associate salary bands, details of which will be announced over the coming weeks.

Managing partner Andrew Lilley, who led the review alongside pensions head Paul Stannard, said: "People have different aspirations regarding their career path and this gives us the flexibility to assess each person individually. We are expecting the number of people off the lockstep to be small."

The news comes after Travers in 2011 doubled the size of the profit pool it makes available for partner bonuses to provide greater flexibility to reward top performers. The firm increased the maximum size of the merit pool used to reward equity and fixed-share partners from 5% to 10% of profits available for distribution to partners.

This year the firm made up three London lawyers to its partnership – litigator Jan-Jaap Baer, investment funds lawyer Jeremy Elmore and banking and corporate recovery lawyer Danny Peel.

Related: Employee Satisfaction Report 2013