This gives an advantage to dominant, intimidating personalities. Obviously, the partners with the most client-fee revenue, the most power and the loudest voice will walk away with the most money. No two partnerships are the same, but a couple of compensation methods offer firms a workable system. Both strategies will likely serve a firm well from start-up to maturity. The points system.
Partners set a bottom-line target for the next year.
They meet in advance to distribute the projected profit on a point, or unit, basis. At MHM a committee of three partners determined the allocation of points and the related bonus. Everybody knew what their potential compensation was if the firm made the target. Two partners with the same points got the same amount of money before the bonus pool was divided. A virtue of this method is that it forces partners to think about the firm rather than just react to events.