EDINBURGH-headquartered Anderson Strathern has become the latest law firm to offer its lawyers an alternative to partnership with the introduction of a new director role.
Billed as a position that will be complementary to the firm’s partner base, the role of director has been established to offer lawyers who are not on the partnership track the opportunity to nevertheless take on a senior position in the firm.
READ MORE: Brexit cases help Scots lawyers to record turnover
Six lawyers have been promoted into the role initially, with each taking part in a leadership-training programme that incorporates coaching on business development skills and how to interpret law firm financials.
The firm’s managing partner Murray McCall said the creation of the role would allow the firm to develop senior talent “by offering a promotion structure and leadership training that works for a modern law firm”.
“Our directors will have a strong and secure foundation for their and for our future development at a time of exciting business growth for the firm. It’s a win, win situation,” he added.
Last year rival Harper Macleod updated its own corporate structure, introducing the roles of senior solicitor and senior associate in a bid to give legal staff better defined career paths.
READ MORE: Harper Macleod uses new roles to help define the route to partnership
Its chief executive Martin Darroch said at the time that the move would also allow the firm to better demonstrate to clients that it was staffing matters with the correct level of personnel.
The six Anderson Strathern solicitors taking up the new directorships are private client lawyer Victoria Simpson, dispute resolution specialists Gary Burton, Sarah Philips and Robbie Wilson, and Neil Fraser and Jon McGee in commercial real estate.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here