Editors' Blog

Herbert Smith’s new deal won’t be the last

Posted 14/09/2007 by Alex Novarese

One of the less flashy but more interesting stories I’ve seen pass my desk in recent days comes courtesy of Herbert Smith, which has recently created a new role for senior professional support lawyers (PSLs). Judging by the number of hits the story has had on our website, I’m not alone in taking note.

The move creates a kind of senior PSL under the title of 'professional support consultant' (PSC). If this all looks a bit familiar, that is because it echoes the current trend for law firms to create alternative career tracks for their fee earners with roles like 'counsel'.

The new PSCs get perks like higher pay - 95% of what an assistant gets at the same point post-qualification. The firm, which has promoted seven PSLs to the new role (six women and one man, as it happens) will typically consider candidates for promotion at nine years’ PQE, at which point assistants typically receive between £112,000 and £122,000 in base salary. So a PSC should be able to take home over £100,000. They will also be in line for a bonus that could nudge the five-figure mark and get three days more annual leave.

It’s a smart move and there are already rumblings that other firms are investigating the same thing. A similar, though distinct, initiative at Allen & Overy, where the firm has made a tentative stab at using specialised ‘transaction executives’ to support some areas of securitisation, is also being watched closely by rivals.

Of course, plenty of senior lawyers will write off the entire concept of alternative career paths, as Nigel Boardman did this week when quoted for a separate Legal Week article.

Boardman may well be correcet that such a concept is not quite right for the kind of lawyers who have fed the profession since the 1970s. But commercial law is changing fast and a new breed of lawyers - with different attitudes - are coming through. With recently-hiked assistant pay proving an increasingly rigid cost for law firms to manage, it seems certain that many will be investigating ways to inject more flexibility into their business model – probably at all levels. And the likelihood is that there will be a considerable number of lawyers ready to take them up on this new deal.

alex.novarese@legalweek.com