Taylor Wessing has introduced a new policy of disseminating details of its associates' recorded hours internally.
With effect from March, associates have been told the hours recorded by each colleague in their team for the last month and for the year-to-date. So those at the top of the scale can smugly strut along the corridors and sneer at their humiliated, under-achieving friends as they desperately beg partners for work and the chance to put in an all-nighter.
The news follows the recent revelation that associates elsewhere are being publicly shamed if they're not sufficiently profitable. Law firms are clearly realising that encouraging associates to engage in some healthy competition with each other is an easy way to keep profits up. Well, easier at least than getting partners off their arses to bring in some new clients...
A spokeswoman for the firm said that this was a trial to try to help associates to share work more equally. "Obviously as a result of trialling the publication of utilisation rates to each of our Business Groups independently we introduced a spirit of competition to ensure those hours are achieved, but our goal was also to help associates manage their workload by equalising what was at the time an uneven use of capacity. We are reviewing the impact of this trial on an ongoing basis to ensure it remains effective" said the spokeswoman excitedly.
Tip Off ROF
With effect from March, associates have been told the hours recorded by each colleague in their team for the last month and for the year-to-date. So those at the top of the scale can smugly strut along the corridors and sneer at their humiliated, under-achieving friends as they desperately beg partners for work and the chance to put in an all-nighter.
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An underperforming associate yesterday |
The news follows the recent revelation that associates elsewhere are being publicly shamed if they're not sufficiently profitable. Law firms are clearly realising that encouraging associates to engage in some healthy competition with each other is an easy way to keep profits up. Well, easier at least than getting partners off their arses to bring in some new clients...
A spokeswoman for the firm said that this was a trial to try to help associates to share work more equally. "Obviously as a result of trialling the publication of utilisation rates to each of our Business Groups independently we introduced a spirit of competition to ensure those hours are achieved, but our goal was also to help associates manage their workload by equalising what was at the time an uneven use of capacity. We are reviewing the impact of this trial on an ongoing basis to ensure it remains effective" said the spokeswoman excitedly.