PEP ‘not helpful’, says Mishcon

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By Thomas Connelly on

11

London law firm confirms it will no longer publish profit per equity partner figure as it reveals latest set of financial results

Mishcon de Reya has said it will no longer publish its profit per equity partner (PEP) figure, describing the popular metric as not helpful or useful for “a business like ours”.

The London law firm’s decision to dump the measurement comes as it revealed double-digit increases to both profits and turnover.

Total profit before members’ remuneration climbed an impressive 22% to £93 million, while turnover hit £225 million — a 10% uptick on the previous year. The results were impacted by costs associated with the planned but later abandoned stock exchange floatation, as well as the tie-up with London law firm Taylor Vinters.

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Commenting on the results, chief financial officer Matt Hotson said:

“Our goal is create long term value — for our clients, our people and the society in which we operate. PEP is not a metric which is helpful in this context nor is it useful for a business like ours with a diversified offering of legal and non-legal services.”

Managing partner James Libson added: “This was a strong performance and shows the resilience of our business in a tough trading period. We will continue to deliver on the strategy outlined on our 10-year vision, recognising that success in the current environment — with all of its complex challenges and transformative opportunities — calls for strategic discipline alongside agile decision making and an appetite for innovation.”

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11 Comments

Anonymous

I’ve got a good PEP. You don’t know her, she goes to another school.

Jim

Completely agree. There’s some firms who report a huge PEP but less than 20% of their partnership are equity partners. And then the equity spread can be so wide that the actual PEP figure is entirely meaningless. Like the lowest might be £200k and the highest £2m, there might be a handful of partners within those brackets, and the PEP will be reported as something like £600k. It’s completely pointless!

Jim

Fieldfisher is the best example of this. Small equity partnership, most of whom take home less than £500k, but the managing partner takes £4m+ so they report their PEP as £1,050,000.

1PQE

What would be helpful, Mishcon, is if you didn’t pay terrible salaries and insulting bonuses to your junior lawyers, with no visibility on what anyone else more senior than you gets paid. How am I outpaid by an NQ at Taylor wessing? Where is the profit going?

Anonymous

What is your salary at 1PQE out of interest?

Taylor Vinters Managing Associate

I’m asking the same question as you except I am outpaid by an NQ at Mishcon…!

CC's 2PQE

If you think £90+ is a terrible salary maybe you should enter the real world.

Got a B in stats so take with grain of salt

Providing the Median take home sounds like it would be a much better metric (as it would account for the extremes on both ends of Partner pay)

Answer the q

What is the salary of 1 pqe at Mishcon? And Taylor Wessing is better than Mishcon that’s just a fact.

Anonymous

£91K at 1PQE. Salary goes up by £1K for each year of qualification.

It’s a two-tiered system

Depends on who you ask at Mishcon because for some it’s in the 70s

Join the conversation

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