Ninety-six per cent of partners surveyed would recommend their firm to prospective recruits. Yet 21 per cent aren’t sure they’ll still be there in three years.
The contradiction cuts to the heart of a profession in flux.
New research from TBD Marketing, surveying 160 partners across the UK’s Top 250 law firms, reveals a sector caught between loyalty and deep dissatisfaction. Partners remain proud of the institutions they’ve helped build. But when asked how fairly their contribution gets measured, they awarded an average score of 2.6 out of 10. Nearly a quarter gave the lowest possible mark: zero.
The numbers expose a tension that’s been building for years. Partnership was once the destination—the culmination of a decade or more of grinding through associate years. Once you made it, you stayed. That assumption is crumbling.
Churn rates tell the story with uncomfortable clarity. Among Top 50 firms, nearly a quarter of partners—24.6 per cent—say they may leave within the next few years. The figure drops to 21.2 per cent in firms ranked 51 to 100, and falls further to 13.8 per cent outside the Top 100. The bigger the firm, it seems, the greater the existential unease.
Yet firms haven’t lost the goodwill of their partnerships entirely. The 96 per cent recommendation rate sits just above the 93 per cent recorded among associates in a 2025 survey. On the surface, morale looks intact.
Scratch that surface, though, and resentment festers.
Partners with leadership responsibilities—those running practice groups or steering sector strategies—feel the sharpest sting. They rated the fairness of contribution measurement at just 1.3 out of 10. These are the individuals tasked with driving growth, managing client relationships, and shaping firm strategy. And they feel the least recognised for it.
The equity divide deepens the fracture. Equity partners reported a net promoter score of +56, suggesting strong alignment with their firms. Salaried partners, by contrast, scored just +22. The gap reveals two distinct partnership experiences. Equity partners sit at the table where decisions get made, embedded in the firm’s identity and long-term planning. Salaried partners carry senior titles and client responsibility but occupy a more ambiguous position—partners in name, yet often excluded from the inner circle.
Simon Marshall, founder of TBD Marketing, framed the findings as a structural problem, not a morale crisis.
“Partnership has always been where ambition, economics and identity collide – for most it’s a very big deal to be made a partner,” he said. “What this data shows is not a collapse in loyalty to firms, but a growing misalignment between what partners believe should be valued and how contribution is actually measured. If we want to keep brilliant people, we need to reward them, and in the ways they want to be valued.”
He added that expectations around tenure have shifted fundamentally. “There used to be an assumption that once you made partner you stayed for life. That mindset is starting to soften. Lawyers are still deeply committed to their firms, but they’re thinking more actively about how partnership works in practice and whether it gives them the flexibility and recognition they expect.”
Succession planning compounds the anxiety. Partners gave their firms an average score of 7 out of 10 for succession planning—a middling grade that suggests uncertainty about how client relationships, leadership roles, and economic value will transfer to the next generation. That concern intensifies when partners assess the associates coming up behind them. On average, they rated current associate calibre at 5.9 out of 10.
The implication is stark. If associates aren’t seen as a dependable engine of quality and capacity, partners face mounting workload pressures. Delegation becomes harder. Scalability suffers. The model strains under its own weight.
Meanwhile, private equity circles the sector with increasing aggression—and partners want none of it.
The survey recorded a net score of -74 for private equity among partners, and -62 for mergers and acquisitions. The scepticism runs deep. Yet the deals keep coming. According to the latest UK Legal Services Market Report from IRN, 25 per cent of legal mergers and acquisitions last year involved either new private equity investment or PE-backed law firms, up from 20 per cent in 2023. Research from Acquira Professional Services shows nearly £1.2bn flowed into UK law firms from private equity between 2020 and 2025, as larger investment houses target the sector with growing intensity.
The disconnect between strategy and sentiment is widening. Firms pursue consolidation and external investment as competitive pressures mount. Partners, tasked with operating within those structures, remain unconvinced.
Alternative models are gaining traction in response. According to the Codex Edge Platform Firms Report 2025, consultant model firms now employ around 4,000 lawyers across the market. Lawyers in those firms typically retain around 70 per cent of their fees—a sharp contrast to traditional partnership economics.
Kate Bennett, co-founder of Arbor Law, argued that retaining senior lawyers increasingly depends on clarity, autonomy, and meaningful work.
“For many partners, the work itself remains the best part – challenging in the right ways, commercially consequential, often genuinely interesting,” she said. “Arbor Law was built by people who had had enough of it – and who wanted to prove you could do City-quality work without any of the Big Law baggage. When we founded the firm, we were trying to solve something practical: how to do high-calibre work for exacting clients, with colleagues you genuinely trust, without importing the architecture that makes senior practice feel unnecessarily painful.”
The findings point to a profession reassessing its foundations. Pride in firms remains strong. Loyalty hasn’t evaporated. But the questions multiplying around recognition, succession, and long-term stability suggest the traditional partnership model faces a reckoning.
Whether firms adapt quickly enough to retain their most experienced lawyers—or whether those lawyers accelerate the shift toward alternative structures—will shape the sector for years to come. For now, the tension persists: recommend the firm, but keep one eye on the exit.
