A recent survey of a types of legal workers in the UK, who have changed jobs at least once in their career, has shown that poor pay, constant stress, poor career progression and a lack of work-life balance are the primary reasons why they’re leaving their jobs.


Some 35% of those surveyed working in the legal sector said pay was a major factor in them deciding to leave their role, whilst 24% cited work-life balance as the major reason for moving. Twelve-percent revealed that their old position was too stressful and 24% told Go1, the online learning platform which conducted the survey, that they wanted a career change.
The research further found that 20% of workers in the legal industry felt their employer didn’t offer sufficient career progression.


This figure was the joint highest, alongside the IT sector, of all the sectors surveyed in this category. It was closely followed by architecture & engineering (19%), whilst 14% of those those surveyed in the finance sector complained of poor career progression.


An average of all professions included in the research also indicates that Generation Z (aged 16-23) will only stay in a role they’re unhappy in for just over four months before resigning.
Millennials (aged 24-42), however, are likely to stick it out slightly longer, waiting just under a year (11.2 months) before leaving, whereas Generatopn X (aged 43-54) will wait for just over a year (12.5 months) and baby boomers (aged 55-73) 17.6 months.


The website Legal Cheek has been closely reporting on the war for legal talent that has been going on since US firms began to expand their foothold in the London legal market.

​Many top US players now pay their City juniors upwards of £160,000 upon qualification, our Most List 2023 shows. But the work hours have also become more extreme, with some City lawyers clocking off, on average, post 11pm.

Undue focus on fees generated relative to budget, and indeed on amount of fees rendered per se, can have some interesting outcomes in law firms. This is especially so when very significant management responsibilities are given to team leaders, who may have very different understandings of what is good management and what is good performance within their team.


In some law firms when a lawyer becomes an Associate or Partner they are allocated more FirmTime™ in their WorkPlan™ for performing increasing aspects of their changed role, such as greater supervision and training of other less experienced team members.


They might also be allocated more FirmTime™ for Business Development.


Unless the total time allocated in the WorkPlan™ increases, and it seldom does, the amount of time allocated for ClientTime™ reduces as a consequence, and so does annual fee budget, unless the WorkPlan™ reflects a belief that the new Associate or Partner will be able to recover the same or greater fees than before.


The reality is that very often annual fee target is reduced.


Some firms have incentive schemes under which team members are paid a bonus if they achieve their annual fee target, and in some cases that bonus increases in an agreed relationship to the amount of fees above budget.


Different permutations are found throughout the Profession, and some work much better than others.


One issue that needs to be watched closely is management making sure that the FirmTime™ allocated as described above is actually invested, and effectively.


I regularly see situations in which the extra FirmTime™ allocated is not used at all, often because the newly promoted team member does not have skills in Business Development, and does not invest sufficient time to acquire them. Examples of team members having a strong dislike of Business Development are rife.


What can happen is that the team member simply continues to invest around the same level of time into ClientTime™ as they did before, and will thus quite easily exceed their new budget.


Management must remain aware that far from being a “star”, generating exceptional fees relative to budget, the team member is actually not carrying out their new role correctly.


This is especially likely if the team member was an over-achiever before in the fees area, and that was a big part of the reason they were promoted!


Early discussion needs to take place to start work on re-directing effort into the relevant aspects of the role in correct proportions.
It would be a serious mistake to allow the team member to earn a larger bonus by failing to do what was intended, and generate “excessive” fees as a result.


Whether a firm has an incentive scheme or not, failing to manage investment of resources properly is a major area of concern.
It should be noted that along with inadequate ongoing management, the design of the incentive scheme may in itself be unsophisticated, and in many cases encourage the wrong behaviour entirely.


In my observation, over more than 47 years now, many incentive schemes are fairly blunt instruments, designed in an attempt to give team members additional incentive to do what they should be doing anyway as a basic requirement of their job and base remuneration.


The incentive scheme is often a very poor substitute for good planning and people management, within a good culture, and rarely works successfully across the firm.


I prefer additional ad hoc, considered but unexpected, reward for rounded super-performance above and beyond expectations.


Source: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-some-lawyers-earn-bigger-bonus-properly-doing-job-knowsley-llb-

This post so resonated with me that I had to reproduce it here;

My employee resigned.


I just started as a manager in a new company and this was a shock to me.
​

I asked why.


He said he feels stifled, unappreciated, without a career path, and most of all, has been taking tasks that nobody else was willing to take.


I looked deeper, his previous manager took all the interesting work, and let routine tasks to be dealt by his employees. But then his best people started to quit, and at some point, he stopped being effective. So he left too.


This employee was one the last of the best people remaining.


The best people always suffer the worst from bad leadership.


It took me an enormous effort to convince him to give me a chance.


It was even harder effort to rebuild the team and to earn their trust.


To manage smart people, you do NOT need to be smarter than they are.


You need to give them a chance to grow, opportunities to shine, and appreciation.


Do you agree ?

Source: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/does-make-hire-smart-people-have-them-follow-stupid-oleg-vishnepolsky