What do you guys do when you have a whippersnapper knocking at the partnership door

And you've turned them down for another year so they go off and get a partnership offer from a firm in the same tier as you?

  1. Cry tears of regret 
  2. Shit on their dreams and tell them they aren't ready
  3. Offer to make them up there and then

?

 

A story as old of time.

Happened to me. Or rather I did it to my firm.

It's difficult for the door knockers as if you let the firms take the Michael, they will, and without an offer elsewhere you are going into a knife fight holding a lemon.

When you have an offer elsewhere you go into a knife fight with a AK47. 

Anyway the firm's reaction was mainly 2 and then 1 and then 3. 

Send them the restrictive covenants section of their employment contract with the most onerous bits double underlined, with “ungrateful c*untface” scrawled across the top 

Restrictive covenants don't do much at that level 

Unlikely to have lots of their own clients anyway 

More losing the talent, the stability, the management etc. Means partners have to do far more work and far less BD.

At my first shop, the reaction of partners was invariably to say "the firm you are going to is sh1t" (they were convinced of the supremacy of their firm amongst the MC) and then tell everyone afterwards about how sh!t the firm was leading up to when the news got out that person X was going.