For the first time, Law360 and Major, Lindsey, and Africa team up to survey BigLaw partners in their 2022 Partner Compensation Survey. We are joined by Craig Savitzky, Senior Data Analyst at Law360 and Jeffrey Lowe, Global Practice Leader of the Law Firm Practice at Major Lindsey and Africa. With this being the first survey of law firm partners since most firms have made some effort to return to the office, there were some surprises on how much remote work partners want to take versus how much their firms are offering. It may not be what you think.

Women and minority partners made some strong gains according to this survey in narrowing the pay gap. While the gap is still significant between women/minority partners and their white male colleagues, this was the smallest percentage in the history of the survey which began in 2010.

For the first time, the difference between average equity partner pay was more than $1 Million over average non-equity partner pay.

Savitzky and Lowe unpack a lot of data from the survey for us.

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Crystal Ball Answers from LVNx

This week we talk with Properoware founder Keith Lipman, who recently merged into Litera, about the role that ALSP’s and others will play in filling the gap left by law firms when the economy begins its expected downturn.

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Music: Jerry David DeCicca

 

Transcript

Marlene Gebauer 0:08
Welcome to The Geek in Review. Podcast focused on innovative and creative ideas in the legal industry. I’m Marlene Gebauer.

Greg Lambert 0:15
And I’m Greg Lambert. Well Marlene this weekend I get to go to my law firms retreat and even get to play guitar. I wasn’t 100% ready but that’s never stopped me in the past.

Marlene Gebauer 0:27
So that sounds a lot more exciting than my weekend my weekend was filled with baseball and volleyball practice.

Greg Lambert 0:36
The joy is a parent’s of a teenager.

Marlene Gebauer 0:38
Exactly. So this week, we have Craig Savitzky, Senior Data Analyst at law 360 And Jeffrey Lowe, Global Practice Leader of the law firm practice at major Lindsey and Africa. Talking about the just released 2022 partner compensation survey, there’s a lot to unpack, ranging from how many partners are wanting to work from home versus back to office to a shrinking of the salary gap between women and minority partners and their white male counterparts?

Greg Lambert 1:06
Well, first up, we have another crystal ball answer from my time at the Legal Value Network Experience conference.

Marlene Gebauer 1:12
Thank God for that!

Greg Lambert 1:16
This time we hear from the legal tech vendor side of things with Keith Lipman, who’s Prosperowear his company was recently purchased by Litera. So Keith looks at how the ALSPs in the industry are going to step in and fill a void when there’s a slowdown in the market. So let’s take a listen to Keith first and then we’ll jump right into our conversation with Craig Savitzky and Jeffrey Lowe.

Keith Lipman 1:43
Hi, it’s Keith Lipman from Litera. I used to be the CEO of Prosperowear. So I’ve been in this industry a long time. So here’s my kind of thing. You know, if we’re about to enter a recessionary time, the classic cycle we’ve seen, where the corporate legal departments staff up is, we see the staffing and the headcount start coming out. Traditionally, all that headcount would go back to the law firms and law firms would just see improved profit during your discretionary periods. But the question is, now that we have alternative legal providers, where’s the people going to go? And does this mean is going to actually cause a change in the business model for law firms, as all that work now goes away into the alternative? World?

Greg Lambert 2:20
I know, we’ve got some areas outside of the typical alternative legal service providers that we’ve had, looking at Arizona, looking at Utah and some of the things do you see expansion of that? If we have a downturn?

Keith Lipman 2:34
Oh, I think we can actually see people demanding that expansion as people want to put these business models somewhere else, right, it’s going to be a huge need, we need to get those people working, that headcount is just going to turn into some form of hourly work. But it’s gonna be at a low cost model, not at a traditional law firm model, which has got a much higher overhead.

Greg Lambert 2:54
All right, thank you very much. We’d like to welcome Craig Savitzky, Senior Data Analyst at law 360, and Jeffrey Lowe, Global Practice Leader of the law firm practice at major Lindsey and Africa, Greg, and Jeff, welcome to The Geek in Review.

Jeffrey Lowe 3:13
Thanks for having us. Hi.

Craig Savitzky 3:14
Yeah, thank you.

Marlene Gebauer 3:15
We brought you on to talk about the brand new survey collaboration between La 360 and major Lindsey and Africa on partner compensation, and some of the significant findings uncovered this year.

Greg Lambert 3:25
So before we jump into the survey results, let’s talk a little bit about the collaboration between La 360 and MLA. So Jeff, you know, major, Lindsey, and Africa has produced this survey multiple times since 2010. So what’s the reason this year of teaming up with law 360, on this particular survey?

Jeffrey Lowe 3:49
Sure, it’s always been very important to us to have a research partner go into the field, and actually administer the survey aren’t on our behalf. When you’re asking people how much money they make and how much business they have, they tend to get a little sensitive about it. And we’ve got since the surveys Inception 2010, that would be great to pair with a research partner in law. 360 is one of the leaders in the legal industry and thought leadership, and we thought they’d be a great partner this year, and they prove to be just that.

Craig Savitzky 4:21
Yeah, that’s right. And we’ve also we’ve had three successful prior collaborations. Earlier in the year we work together on a law firm culture survey, another one called law life 2.0 How the pandemic redefine the way we work and a return to Office survey. So a lot of sort of COVID related projects. So on the heels of those seemed like a good idea to team up and you know, they have MLA has a decade’s worth of of longitudinal data that we could leverage. So it seems like A an ideal match and a way that we could sort of pair our respective networks.

Marlene Gebauer 5:05
This is essentially the first set of survey results pulse COVID. And with the common use of remote work for law firms, firms were forced into being more flexible with how their partners works during COVID. And, you know, this conversation, just this this, you know, remote work conversation just seems to keep, you know, on and on and on and on. So, Jeff, what results are you finding on work flexibility in this survey?

Jeffrey Lowe 5:30
Sure, you know, not surprisingly, we found it’s incredibly important to people of ours, over two thirds of the respondents placed importance on being able to work remotely. And 10% of the partners that we surveyed said they would change firms because of it. And when you look at it, by age cohorts, it was the more junior partners who were twice as likely to say, look, if I don’t get to work remotely, I’m probably going to change firms. So we saw inside of two years, really 10 years of change, because I think we can all we all know that working from home was something that was coming, it was just forced to happen almost overnight.

Greg Lambert 6:11
Yeah, yeah. Nothing like an emergency to get a firm to actually do something that they should have been doing for years. There were some thoughts floating around really early during COVID, where some partners were saying, you know, well, we I just may decide just to go and live on my ranch in Colorado or Montana. There was an other talks where people would just go live somewhere where the overall cost of living might be lower, say then, in the, you know, the New York or San Francisco metropolitan areas. Craig, did any of that actually come to fruition? Did we have people moving away?

Craig Savitzky 6:50
Yeah. So according to the results, people definitely did the can during COVID, but maybe not to the extent a one might think. So we broke down by age demographics. Somewhat surprisingly, the 20 plus year, tenure partner grouping had a slightly higher percentage of partners reporting that they changed their geographic location, that number was 9%. Then each of the other tenure groupings, which were all at 6% equity partners, at a slightly higher percentage of partners reporting, they change their geographic location 8% as opposed to their non equity partner cohort, which was at 5%. Though, on the other hand, the more junior the tenure group, the less likely the respondents were to report that they were planning to move back when the firm’s fully opened. So those in the one to five year range, were at 21%. In six to 10 years, were at 22% 11 to 20 years were 32%. And then 20 plus we had 37%. But conversely, a slightly higher percentage of equity partners reported that they were planning to move back 31% than non Equity Partners, which was a 27%.

Greg Lambert 8:23
Yeah, no. Did the survey ask how close they were to a major golf course?

Craig Savitzky 8:31
That’s something to consider for the next the next edition.

Marlene Gebauer 8:36
In response to COVID, law firms were beginning to establish wellness programs and looking at focusing more on the mental and physical health of their lawyers and allied professionals at their firms. So what’s happening on that front as we’re moving past the COVID emergency status?

Jeffrey Lowe 8:53
Sure. So you know, not surprisingly, 58% of the respondents said that their firm’s either implemented or enhance some sort of technology program. In response to COVID. Another 53% said that their firm, either implemented or enhanced mental health and wellness programs. 27% talked about physical health and wellness. What I thought was interesting is 24% said their firms did nothing. They did nothing about technology, they did nothing about wellness. So I was I was just a little surprised by that result. I mean, I just would have thought that would have been, you know, many fewer numbers. I think another interesting finding was if you dig a little deeper into the report, you’ll see there was definitely a geographical component to that. Certainly, you know, firms out on the West Coast partners on the West Coast had a much higher response rate of talking about, you know, programs being implemented or enhanced than we saw, perhaps in the South and the Southeast.

Greg Lambert 10:00
I don’t think that’s really surprising though I was going to

Marlene Gebauer 10:03
ask how to Texas do

Jeffrey Lowe 10:06
I want to take a look at those results?

Marlene Gebauer 10:09
I don’t think I need to.

Greg Lambert 10:11
I also wondered if the firm’s where you said 25% responded that their firms did nothing. I would like to see the Venn diagram of firms that laid off or did furloughs and the ones that did nothing if that if those overlap quite a bit.

Jeffrey Lowe 10:30
Yeah, that would definitely be interesting. And, you know, that was something that we saw, really, at the front end of the pandemic, we know when everybody was expecting the worst. And really, the industry miracle of all time, is the fact that, you know, sometime between June and September of 2020, things just turned around and law firms didn’t look back and have their best years ever and 2020. Even better in 2021.

Greg Lambert 10:54
Yeah, yeah. Well, back to kind of partners changing behaviors. Was there any significant change in partners wanting to move away from full time work and taking on some type of reduction in hours or even going part time? Yeah. So

Craig Savitzky 11:11
what we learned was that the more junior the tenure grouping, the more likely the respondents work schedule was impacted by the pandemic 15% of partners in the one to five grouping reported being impacted, versus 14% 9% 5%, respectively, for partners in the six to 10, 11 to 20, and 20 plus age groupings. Partners in the six to 10 year grouping reported the greatest percentage impact 20%, and the most seasoned partners 20 Plus reported the lowest impact 18%. And similarly, with the partners were twice as likely to report being impacted as equity partners 60 versus 8%, although their respective reductions in hours were much closer, 24 and 20, respectively.

Marlene Gebauer 12:12
So I want to move on to more compensation and financial questions that the survey addresses. So like equity, non equity partner ranges, now many listeners see law firms profits for partner amounts and see those seven figure numbers. But equity partners actually make about three times what a non equity partner makes. Is that consistent with your surveys,

Jeffrey Lowe 12:36
it absolutely is. And it’s been that way for as long as I’ve been doing that since 2010. This year, Equity Partners averaged $1.73 million, and non Equity Partners, average $460,000. And this is the first year that the difference is more than a million dollars on average. Now, interestingly, they both saw, I think, roughly similar increases in the comp, but when you’re starting from such a higher number 15% on a higher number just means that much more money, and that much greater differentiation in terms of absolute dollars, what practice

Greg Lambert 13:11
areas during between the previous two surveys, which ones have thrived over the last couple of years, and which ones may have been flattered or down during COVID.

Craig Savitzky 13:23
Sure, yeah. So what we discovered was that tax in ERISA, which partners which we bundled together, reported, the only decline in average total comp from our 2020 edition to the current and that was down 9%. And interestingly, those same partners had had the highest portion who expressed that they were very satisfied with sedation, and that was a 33%. Corporate partners reported the highest average total compensation, I guess, not entirely, surprisingly, and the highest percentage increase, and it’s at 1,488,000. So it’s up 26%, while Labor and Employment partners reported the lowest average total comp, and that was 653,000. But also up 6%.

Marlene Gebauer 14:25
In the survey, what did you find in terms of partners being able to pass along billable rate increases?

Jeffrey Lowe 14:32
You know, we don’t ask them that question. But we do ask them, you know, whether their rates have gone up, they went up, again, 5% over 2020. But I think they were basically able to do whatever they wanted during the last two years because the demand was so strong. And in fact, you know, we had cases where we we’d hear firms telling us what, you know, we can’t possibly even get all the work done. We’re not going to focus on work. that clients don’t want to pay premium rates for So, law firms were definitely in the driver’s seat when it came to being able to raise and collect from law firms during this period. Now, it’ll be interesting to see what happens again, you know, we might see a situation similar to what we saw in 2008 2009, where things pivoted very quickly, and clients were very, very aggressive in seeking out discounts from their law firms.

Greg Lambert 15:27
So Jeff, why do you think partner’s average on the non billable hours dropped significantly, and I think it was around 16% Drop, even though their average billable hours only increased a modest 2%. During the last survey, what’s the discrepancy there?

Jeffrey Lowe 15:45
Sure, a little bit is just, you know, fun with percentages. Bill, you want to call it that lawyers aren’t terribly fond of math. So you know, part of it is that their billable hours are usually three times three or four times what their non billable hours are. So when things go up a little bit, it’ll be reflected as a smaller percentage than when something happens with the non billable hours, which is a smaller percentage of their overall total hours. But what we found is, as you said, billable hours went up about 41 hours since the last survey. And what’s most important about that is, for the prior 10 years, the prior five, five surveys, the number of billable hours fell within a seven hour range every single time between 16 180 and 16 187. So that 41 hours is actually a huge spike. And when you think about it, 41 hours is a whole week, right? Everybody build a whole extra week

Greg Lambert 16:47
that lasts because they didn’t take vacation.

Jeffrey Lowe 16:52
It’s because non billable hours fell 91 hours. And so not only did they not do that non billable and you know, unfortunately, a lot of that was pro bono work. That wasn’t done. But they also didn’t do another 50 hours on top of that. So I think that’s what explains. Okay,

Marlene Gebauer 17:11
so we’ve discussed in earlier episodes on the podcast that women and minorities really left the workforce during during COVID and didn’t come back. How are the salaries for women and minority partners?

Jeffrey Lowe 17:28
Sure. So you know, this year, we saw that male partners average just over $1.2 million and female partners average $905,000 $300,000 difference, it’s actually the smallest gap that we’ve seen since our 2010 survey. And so the gap narrowed from 53% in our 2018 survey, down to 44%, in 2020, down to 34%. This year. So we’re encouraged by those results. Again, you know, that’s what our respondents reported. And it’s a small number, right of the entire population. But it definitely seems to be trending in the right direction. We hope it reflects that, you know, firms are getting it and firms are making sure that female partners are being compensated fairly.

Marlene Gebauer 18:21
Yeah, I suppose I should be happy about that.

Greg Lambert 18:27
Well, what about minorities,

Jeffrey Lowe 18:29
so it’s a little bit harder to say what’s happening for the following reason. There are very few diverse partners in big law. And when you’re doing a survey like this, you typically get a response rate of maybe somewhere between two and 5%. So when you take a small number of potential people out there, and then you send them a survey, and you get two to 5%, you have a very small number of people reporting. So for the non white categories of respondents, we do see the effects we think of sampling variation, which means you can see very large swings year over year in the results this year, we saw that white partners reported average compensation of $1.13 million, reflecting a healthy increase, whereas black partners reported a decrease from 830,000, down to 752,000. But then, if you look at Hispanic and Asian Pacific partners, both groups had huge increases in compensation. And we think that’s great, but we just want to make sure people know you know, when you look at the number of respondents in the black category that might only be 40 or 50 people, Asian Pacific or Hispanic, it might be 70 people and so we report the numbers because there are so few numbers out there, right? There’s just so little information on the topic, but we always want to be sure to talk about the sampling variation so people don’t read it. too much into it

Greg Lambert 20:01
makes sense. Now the one one thing I worry about, and I guess we’ll have to wait two years for or whenever the next survey comes out, it seems like there was a lot of capacity issues when it came when it came to work. And therefore, I think a lot of partners that would normally have some capacity to take on work didn’t have that in it funneled out to others who normally don’t. And then if work dries up a little bit, are they going to continue to take the large load of that and take it away from the the women and minorities? So be interesting to see how that pans out as demand goes down? A little bit?

Jeffrey Lowe 20:43
Yeah, that’s a great point, Greg. And it is something that we see time and time again, I mean, I’m old enough to have gone through five recessions at this point, and it’s certainly something that you hear when when things dip, you know, partners are thought of as hoarding the work. And, you know, either the service partners or the senior associates, you know, they’re they get worried because they don’t have as much work to do. And that makes them vulnerable.

Greg Lambert 21:10
Oh, Craig, that kind of leads nicely into the next question, which is, what did you find was the overall satisfaction for salaries among the different groups of partners?

Craig Savitzky 21:21
So? Well, one of the more prominent findings was the gap between Equity Partners and non Equity Partners compensation satisfaction, remains wide and is growing, with 40%. Partners very satisfied compared to 10%. Equity Partners. And that’s up from 32 and 12, respectively, in 2020.

Marlene Gebauer 21:48
Jeff, partners in many of the highest compensation geographies, New York, the Bay Area, are among the least satisfied with their compensation. Why is that?

Jeffrey Lowe 21:58
You know, it’s a really great question, Marlene, and I hadn’t really focused on it before. But I took a look at the data. And you know, you’re absolutely right. And the interesting thing is, satisfaction generally tracks compensation, and the partners in those geographies are highly compensated. And the only thing I can think of is, the cost of living in those areas is typically much higher than in the other parts of the country. And so even though they’re making more money than their peers elsewhere across the country, they don’t get to save as much of it, or they have to spend much more of it simply to live. And I think that might account for it.

Marlene Gebauer 22:39
Yeah, that’s interesting, given that, you know, many people, probably their costs were reduced having, you know, with with COVID, and not having to commute and, you know, not going out and things like that. So that that is a that is an interesting finding.

Jeffrey Lowe 22:55
Yeah, and when you look at the cost of real estate, both buying and renting, I mean, that’s been skyrocketing during the pandemic. So, you know, perhaps that’s what accounts for it.

Greg Lambert 23:07
Correct? Why do you think that the the lateral partners who who came over are slightly more satisfied with their compensation than the homegrown partners? And it’s not just in the latest one, but it was also in the 2020. survey as well.

Craig Savitzky 23:24
That’s right. Yeah. Well, I think, you know, I think the number is somewhat negligible. The disparity I think, was only in the four to 5% range. But I think really, what it comes down to is money, I think, you know, partners, that jump to different firms are more likely to be compensated better than those that were promoted from within. And that’s somewhat speculative on my part, but I think the data reflects that, too. To a degree.

Jeffrey Lowe 23:59
Yeah, absolutely. Craig. And, you know, as a former partner at Washington’s largest law firm, I mean, the joke is always, you know, when you see lateral partners coming in what they’re being paid, you know, well, the current partners look at each other and say, I gotta move. I mean, if they’re paying that person, that I’m going to go somewhere else, where they’re going to pay me that for that much business. So, I mean, it’s something that we’ve heard for forever at law firms that lateral partners get treated better than homegrown partners when it comes to compensation.

Marlene Gebauer 24:28
So we’re coming up on on Halloween season, and I’m wondering, were there any strange or unexpected results that the survey revealed? Were there any tricks or treats? Yeah,

Jeffrey Lowe 24:39
you know, there’s one thing that I wanted to talk about that was very surprising to me. In fact, it was so surprising that I called Craig up and I said, Craig, can you please check this data? Because it’s not at all what I expected. And it’s when we asked partners, how many days would they prefer to work remotely. They came back and the average was two point Five one days now, obviously they didn’t get to choose, you know, decimal places in their days. But when you crunch the data among 1800 people, that’s what the average was whether they selected two, three or four. And then our next question was, well, how many days will Europe was? Will your firm allow you to work remotely? Or did they allow you to work remotely? And the answer was 3.39 days, which, when you include those decimal points, which could have gotten lost, if we had rounded both numbers, right, both would have been three. But you’re actually looking at discrepancy of nearly a day. And so I think from the law firm side, they might be able to take comfort in knowing you know, what, what we’ve been offering people is actually more than what they’re telling us at least what they’re telling major Lindsey and Africa in this survey, right? What they’re looking for now, what we’re seeing in practices, the firm’s are having a tough time, getting their partners to show up, they’re all trying to get partners back to the office, you know, at least several days a week and every single firm I talk with, say, you know, and there might be a geographic component to this as well, right is, it’s really tough. The partners are coming in maybe one day, a week or two days a week. And I mean, I think many firms have just forgotten about the concept of ever having those people in five days a week, so. But to me, that was the most surprising thing. It really, really actually made me literally question the results. So in print confirmed it to me,

Greg Lambert 26:35
since this was your first go round together on this survey? Would there be any changes or additions that you’ll want to want to make when it comes time to do the survey again, in 2020? For

Jeffrey Lowe 26:49
sure, I mean, I think this work from home question is one that’s going to be staying with us for a long, long time. One of the important reasons we went forward with the survey in 2020, during the height of the pandemic was because we thought, the 2019 salary data, which is what we collect, you know, it’s always a year behind, because that’s the last full year, we thought that was gonna represent the high point for partner compensation, because at the time we launched, things were looking pretty bleak. And, you know, to our surprise, before we even rolled out that 2020 report, we already had to go back to the partners and say, Well, now, now, what do you think and the number was just dropping. And then you’d see from the results of the 2022 survey, only 13% said that they were impacted and 2021 and 5%, think it might have some impact on their 2022? Calm? So I think that question will likely go away. But I think some of these other questions related to quality of life now and how law firms are addressing it, because it’s probably such an important component of happiness and retention are questions that we’re likely to keep for some time.

Craig Savitzky 27:57
And I would just add is someone that, you know, conduct surveys for a living if I never have to ask another COVID-19? Question? 2024 I think it’ll, it’ll be too soon. So hopefully, hopefully, by then it’s somewhat of an afterthought.

Greg Lambert 28:14
I hope COVID and inflation are both an

Marlene Gebauer 28:17
afterthought. Yes, absolutely. Jeff and Craig, we ask all of our guests, our crystal ball questions. You can tag team on this one if you want, or you can answer individually. But what do you see as a challenge or change happening with partner compensation or the business of law in the next two to five years?

Jeffrey Lowe 28:38
Sure. I’ll, I’ll start on that. I mean, I think with people coming back to the office, with m&a activity slowing down, the financial markets generally are slowing down. Costs are increasing, I think being able to maintain the level of profitability that they saw under the 2022 survey is going to be difficult. And so if things remain on the current path, it wouldn’t surprise me if the 2024 survey showed numbers that were flat, or, you know, possibly even the decline. We’ve never seen that since rolling out the survey in 2010, you know, which was after the Great Recession. So it’ll be interesting to see what happens over the next couple of years.

Craig Savitzky 29:20
And I guess I’ll just add from just a little bit more of like a macro business business of law standpoint. I’m very interested in web three adoption at law firms and to what extent firms will start embracing things like, like self executing smart contracts, and you know, having, you know, practice is dedicated to you know, litigating in the metaverse and sort of thing things like that. So

Greg Lambert 29:56
well, the new survey just dropped this week. So it’s out, I’ll make sure that we have links on the show notes so that people can go check. Check it out. Craig Savitzky, a senior Data Analyst at law 360. And Jeffrey Lowe, Global Practice Leader of the law firm practice there at major Lindsey Africa. I want to thank you both for coming in and talking about the 2022 partner compensation survey. Thanks, guys.

Jeffrey Lowe 30:23
Thanks for having me. Thank you.

Greg Lambert 30:28
But there was definitely a lot to unpack in in that conversation there. I don’t think I don’t know. I didn’t find anything too terribly surprising.

Marlene Gebauer 30:38
Well, that that whole go, but going back to how many days we want to come into the office, I thought was pretty surprising, given the fact that, you know, everything I hear from everybody is that it’s very hard to convince people to come back to the office. So that was a little surprising.

Greg Lambert 30:56
I can tell you, my thoughts on that is I don’t think that they were 100% truthful to the survey.

Marlene Gebauer 31:07
Well, you heard it here, folks.

Greg Lambert 31:12
Well, and then, you know, and I think it’s also hard to count that because I don’t think it was unusual for some partners to take months away from the office, where they would go, you know, they would still be working. And they may have a home office, but that home office was, you know, on the golf course in, you know, in Southern California or, or at the ranch in Colorado or New Mexico. So, you know, I think it would be really hard to count that because I know a lot of partners, I’ve talked to people across the country didn’t really even come back into the office until after Labor Day.

Marlene Gebauer 31:52
Absolutely. That’s That’s why I was like, Huh, that’s interesting. You know, and I also hope that they do a deeper dive into some of those, those financial questions, because it would be interesting to know, like, what is the dissatisfaction all about? There might be some factors that we’re not aware of there, that would be good to uncover?

Greg Lambert 32:14
Yeah. And the legal industry isn’t all that different from the rest of the the industries out there, and that typically women and minorities are the last to benefit from a good economy, but the first to

Marlene Gebauer 32:30
the first to be impacted to

Greg Lambert 32:32
Yeah, to be impacted when things start to come down. So I’m, I’m more interested in seeing what that 2024 surveys going to look like. Yes,

Marlene Gebauer 32:41
I agree. I agree. Hopefully, we continue to improve.

Greg Lambert 32:47
Yes. Well, and I think that’s the thing is that in order for law firms to improve, I think you people have to keep their eye on the ball and see what these law firms do as the market starts to turn the other direction. You know, I think if they, hopefully if law firms feel like eyes are on them, and expectations are for them to hit certain benchmarks. You know, I think, you know, Mansfield rules all that. Hopefully, the pressure is there to continue rising up with the with the women and minority partners. So

Marlene Gebauer 33:26
well, hopefully, we have some laws passed that basically require range of salaries to be published, I think that will actually solve the problem.

Greg Lambert 33:37
Well, we’ll see. I don’t have great faith in that either. All right. Well, thanks again to Craig and Jeff, for coming on and giving us a snapshot of the 2022 partner compensation survey, which is out now.

Marlene Gebauer 33:53
And of course, thanks to all of you for taking the time to listen to The Geek in Review podcast. If you enjoy the show, share it with a colleague. We’d love to hear from you. So reach out to us on social media. I can be found at @gebauerm on

Greg Lambert 34:05
Twitter, And I can be reached @glambert on Twitter, or you can leave

Marlene Gebauer 34:09
us a voicemail on the new geek and review Hotline at 713-487-7821. And as always, the music you hear is from Jerry David DeCicca Thank you, Jerry.

Greg Lambert 34:20
Thanks, Jerry. All right, Marlene, I will talk to you later. Okay,

Marlene Gebauer 34:23
bye bye.