The most widely read magazine for Canadian lawyers
Issue link: https://digital.canadianlawyermag.com/i/50842
LAW OFFICE MANAGEMENT Compensation counterculture One Calgary firm doesn't have associates, but rather independent consultants who are paid by the hour with no billable targets. BY KEV IN MARRON form a new energy-sector firm, they de- cided to reinvent the wheel by throwing away the treadmill of the billable hour. Now, seven years later, their boutique firm Thackray Burgess is competing successfully in the hot Calgary market and managing partner Michael Thack- ray maintains their freewheeling com- pensation model appeals to lawyers and clients alike. It's a simple model that would prob- W ably not seem at all unusual or innovative outside of the long-established practices and change-averse culture of law firm management. Instead of recruiting as- sociates and putting them on salary with the expectation that they clock a certain number of billable hours a year, Thackray Burgess treats its junior lawyers as inde- pendent consultants, paying them by the hour with no requirement or expectation as to how many hours they will work. 18 APRIL 2008 www. C ANADIAN hen a group of se- nior associates at various Calgary firms got together a few years ago to While many established law firms are struggling to hold onto associates who crave a better balance between their home and working lives, Thackray says his firm's consultants can work as many hours as they want whenever they want, providing they follow through with any specific commitments they make to a cli- ent or the firm. "In circumstances where we're running at 120-per-cent capacity, we would prefer that the people who are working on a file don't go to Belize for a month. Beyond that, because I'm not paying them a fixed salary, I couldn't care less if they're working or not," he says. Thackray Burgess has 10 partners, more correctly described as shareholders under the firm's corporate structure, and a total complement of 40 lawyers and students, most of whom work as hourly paid consultants. Each consultant pays the firm a fixed charge — currently set at $800 a month — for administrative overheads, including secretarial services and office accommodation. The firm keeps its overhead costs to a minimum by dispensing with personal secretaries mag.com and occupying efficient industrial space in a "Class B or C" building in down- town Calgary, says Thackray, who ex- plains that since much of the firm's work is done at client sites there is no need for opulent offices. The savings achieved by these pared- down operations can be reflected in the hourly rates paid to junior lawyers that are relatively high in comparison to the salaries paid to associates at other local firms, according to Thackray. For exam- ple, he says a Thackray Burgess consul- tant, who was called to the bar in 2002, will earn an average hourly rate of $150, thus earning $262,500 for completing 1,750 hours in a year, whereas, he main- tains, the salary of an associate at a simi- lar level in another local firm will likely be closer to $175,000 a year. "If you're working hard here, you're making a lot more money," says Thack- ray Burgess consultant Karen Hall, who was called to the bar 11 years ago. She admits that some associates would miss the benefits and security they get from being on salary, particularly the ILLUSTRATION: JEREMY BRUNEEL