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Legal Recruitment News, Articles & Careers Advice for the Legal Profession

Articles & Careers Advice for Lawyers, Law Students and Law Graduates in the legal profession from Jonathan Fagan, Managing Director of Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment Consultants

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24.08.07 Bonus Schemes - an update/recent experience

Bonus schemes are either loathed or hated by solicitors. I recently read an article about recruitment consultant's salaries, which was talking about the average bonus given to consultants and the way it was done.

It was surprising to find that in what is considered a sales orientated environment, most consultants were getting something lower than 20% above their basic salary as a bonus, whilst it seemed the average was closer to 5-10%.

Solicitors have traditionally been very wary of such schemes, as usually they are weighted so far in favour of the employer, they are a complete waste of time. I have come across schemes that require 5 times the salary to be earned before the scheme kicks in, and then only 10% of earnings paid. I have also come across schemes where the whole firm has to earn x before one particular candidate gets any extra payment.

A recent experience brought me in contact with what I think is the most generous bonus scheme I have come across yet. If you are interested in finding out which firm this is, you would need to be a conveyancing solicitor with about 3-10 years PQE looking in and around Bristol!

The firm offer every solicitor the same package, which is 10% of everything they earn. So if they earn £20,000 in fees, the solicitor gets £2,000 of that. In addition to this, the solicitor also gets 5% of anything their subordinates earn.

I must say that I have always found working for bonuses the better option than salary - salary results in drudgery - people work to survive, rather than living to work occasionally, and salary ends with people clock watching and not being interested in their activities each day. Bonus schemes that work can galvanise whole teams of people to push towards achieving goals, and bring in higher fee income for the firm.

Jonathan Fagan, MD of Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment - no.1 online legal recruitment agency - save time, skip the legal job boards and register with us! www.ten-percent.co.uk/register.htm 

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