Yet money is a complex topic, one which we all grapple with to various degrees, and approach it with our own perspective, mindset, hang-ups and sense of fairness.

Two things stand out from these discussions: generally, we could always do with a little more; and relativity is more important than dollar amount.

So against this backdrop, here are a few observations that might be worth considering when it comes to how you feel about your current remuneration.

If you live to the extent of your income, this will likely have an impact on your stress levels at work

There are exceptions; I’ve heard of people who find their gargantuan mortgages motivating. I have also been regaled with stories from retired partners who talk of times when junior partners were enthusiastically introduced to bank managers who could hock them to the hilt so that the firm had them for life. Maybe a little exaggerated for effect, but there’s an ugly truth in there.

While we talk about culture, wellbeing, employee experience and work/life balance, all of these are influenced by what your financial position is — your ability to manage stress at work often depends on what sort of stress you are under elsewhere.

The partners I’ve worked with who have been able to adopt the best mindset for high performance, or to deal with the machinations of partnership, or rebuild or pivot practices are those who are in a financial position that means if things don’t go to plan, it’s not a financial destruction. Or, at the very least, have a more circumspect relationship with their income and their lifestyle.

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Things to consider:

• How you view and manage your income is important to a sustainable career and whether you actually get the benefits of a high income.
• Your financial freedom involves the cost of your lifestyle, not just your remuneration; increasing the latter tends to expand the former.

According to The Beatles, money can’t buy you love, but research suggests it might be linked to happiness. Work by psychologist Daniel Kahneman and economist Angus Deaton revealed that there was a link to happiness for incomes up to US$75,000, but after that, it flatlined. The argument is more money does make you happier, but only to a point.

And yet it probably isn’t as clear-cut as this. More recently, work by Matthew Killingsworth, Senior Fellow, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, suggests that higher incomes may still have potential to improve people’s day-to-day wellbeing, rather than having already reached a plateau for many people in wealthy countries. 

And if not money itself, then maybe social status can have an impact on happiness, which is not unrelated to money. How you are respected, esteemed or valued by peers, all has an impact.

Having a sense of what money means to you can help put things in perspective. There’s not much point chasing something that doesn’t really improve the quality of your life. 

Asked about how much money is enough, JD Rockefeller is rumoured to have answered: “Just a little more.” I like King Solomon’s observation: whoever loves money never has enough; whoever loves wealth is never satisfied with their income. This is not always easy to put into practice.

Things to consider:

• While money and happiness are complex, gratitude is definitely linked to happiness and very important to wellbeing.
• Relativity can help with perspective on money — if you are looking at people earning less than you.
• Money might be a factor, but it is more problematic generally when it is the factor.
• Being aware of what you really value, quality of work, people you work with, culture etc., can help place your remuneration in the right perspective for you.

Relativity can help when it comes to comparing your income to the market, it can provide a sense of perspective about where you sit and whether you could get more money elsewhere; but it can also be the thing that causes a lot of resentment.

I would say, overwhelmingly, the clients I work with are not money-driven, at least not as a main motivational driver. However, the sense of equity and fairness when it comes to incomes, bonuses, and equity points is a big factor. 

If the person next to you is getting more and they don’t deserve it, money is suddenly very much an issue. This is understandable, but it can also be destructive. If it eats away at you, it can really be demotivating.

Envy, Roosevelt said, is the thief of joy.

It is inevitable in law firms, despite their best efforts, that there will arise disparities in income/equity, and at times unfairly so. The question is what you do about this. You can make sure you argue for what you deserve; being formidable is often useful. You don’t really want to be easy to say no to when it comes to requesting income/bonus/equity increases, or probably anything in a law firm.

But it can also be useful to play the long game and be at peace with what you can and can’t control.

Things to consider:

• It’s likely there will be someone getting paid more than you that doesn’t deserve it — but equally, your own concept of what is deserving tends to be inherently biased in your favour.
• The long game is yours to play. Getting too caught up in bonus amounts or income increases when you are working towards equity, for instance, can be energy and efforts better deployed elsewhere.

You can make more money, but you’ll probably need to skill up.

There are a lot of factors that make up a successful legal practice, luck and timing play a larger hand than is generally talked about. But that aside, if you need to increase your budget, then you can, but this generally means you need to change two things: the way you work and the way you work with your team. This requires change. Change is always challenging for humans, but also rewarding.

Being a great technical lawyer means you’ll be a great technical lawyer. Law firms need great technical lawyers that largely do the work. Unless you can increase the amount of work you bring in, you are always going to be more open to the vagaries of subjectivity.

You can always get better. At any stage of your career, you can always improve.

Things to consider:

• You know the business model: it rewards self-originated work. If you want to earn more, you need to bring in more. This is within your control.
• The time gap between when you do more BD and you actually bring in more work, is all mindset. Weather this and you are well on the way.
• There are people in your firm doing a better job than you at this; learn from them.

If you want a purely financial metrics-driven firm, you get the culture that goes with that. If you want a culture that is not so metric-driven, you may have to deal with the subjectivity that entails.

Things to consider:

• The people in power make the decisions, not necessarily good decisions. You must be reconciled to this. (A bit of poetic license on a Marshall Goldsmith quote.)
• Put your bonus in context. If you are heading to equity within a matter of years, bonus amounts are probably not as important in the long game. Play the long game.
• People notice how you respond to bonuses, incomes, and equity outcomes. Where there is subjectivity, being formidable but reasonable can swing subjectivity your way longer term.
• If you are a junior partner, there are some senior partners being given latitude that you most likely are not getting.

If you find yourself not that happy about your remuneration, it can help to try to put it in perspective so that you can take a course of action that is best for you. 

I’ll let Kurt Vonnegut have the final say. In a poem published in the New Yorker, he asks his friend, the author Joe Heller at a party put on by a billionaire:

I said, “Joe, how does it make you feel

to know that our host only yesterday

may have made more money

than your novel ‘Catch-22’

has earned in its entire history?”

And Joe said, “I’ve got something he can never have.”

And I said, “What on earth could that be, Joe?”

And Joe said, “The knowledge that I’ve got enough.”

Stuart J. Barnett is a thought partner and coach, with clients including multiple BigLaw firms across APAC.