Addleshaw Goddard wants its top-earning partners to be taking home £1m a year by 2019, as high-performing non-partners are set to benefit from a ring-fenced bonus pool. The top-earner target is one of five key performance indicators in a new strategy unveiled at a partners' conference last week.

"We think that's very much achievable and makes us pretty competitive," managing partner John Joyce told Legal Week.

If achieved, it would nearly double the £560,000 taken by Addleshaws' top earners in 2013-14. Assuming the firm's points spread remains unchanged, for the top of the equity to get £1m each point would have to be worth £6,000, taking the bottom of the equity to around £300,000.

The firm's senior management believes the ambitious target, which comes alongside the aim of raising the firm's profit margin to around 30%, can be achieved by a more rigorous measurement of partner performance as opposed to cutting people out of the equity.

"We are not entering into a race to drive PEP up by aggressively managing partners out," Joyce explained. "That's not our style. But there will be an increasing focus on partner performance.

"We took a big hit in the recession because we wanted to keep people on board."

As part of the new strategy, heightened performance checks will come in for partners as well as associates, with partners needing to meet criteria from the firm's expectation framework. Associates, meanwhile, will be able to share a ring-fenced bonus pool available to top-performing lawyers and staff from next year, irrespective of the firm's performance.

"Partners have to understand what their responsibility is," Joyce continued. "Not in a Big Brother sense, but they have to go into things with a plan and knowing when they expect to achieve it."

He said the firm wants to work with its fee earners on an individual basis to maintain quality performance but insisted that doing this "doesn't mean everyone will have to do 2,000 chargeable hours a year".

Last week's partner conference also saw Addleshaws set targets for employee engagement, market recognition, client satisfaction and market share. The firm wants to be in the top quartile in terms of market share compared with its peers in each geography and sector. It also wants to improve its standing in the Legal 500 and Chambers rankings.

However, Joyce said that boosting profitability remained at the centre of the firm's plans for 2019: "If the financial measures aren't going in the right direction we aren't going to be satisfied, even if the others are."

He added that although the firm was looking to invest, partners would not be asked to increase capital contributions.

The firm wants to re-establish its top 20 position by deepening ties with its existing FTSE 350 client base, but management stressed that it is not planning to ditch work lower down the food chain. Senior partner Monica Burch said that being able to do more volume work is a key advantage in terms of securing panel places.

Addleshaws' five main service lines – litigation, real estate, commercial, corporate and finance – will filter down into eight main sectors, with digital added to transport, health, energy and utilities, industrials, real estate, retail and consumer and financial services.

Internationally, the firm is unlikely to open new offices, but it may add to its network of relationship firms. Burch said that although Addleshaws is in all of the jurisdictions it wants to be, it needs to do better to "get people to think of us as an international firm".

She added: "In many ways we have been our own worst enemy in not having that clarity."

A much-touted potential merger has not been ruled out, with management remaining open to the possibility of either a UK or an international tie-up. "We have always said that we would consider accelerating through a merger," said Burch. "We do not need a merger though – we have a really strong financial base."

The firm hired external consultants to conduct internal firm surveys, but insisted that this was not to review strategy wholesale or suggest direction.

"We wanted to build the strategy from within, rather than just buying one," Joyce explained.

Joyce has been consulting with partners about the strategy since May.