This critical report provides the most up-to-date and detailed guide to the practical, regulatory and ethical considerations that must be reflected in your partnership agreement. Extensively revised, the second edition features new case studies and real-life examples, including a sample agreement precedent and comprehensive updates to reflect how new legal and regulatory developments will affect your deed. Key subjects covered include: *The impact of the Legal Services Act on partnership agreements; *Discrimination in partnerships, in particular, age discrimination; *Outcomes-focused regulation; *New business structures; *Distressed partnerships; *Current trends in mergers; *Profit-sharing arrangements and management structures: *The equality system *Profit share by capital contribution *Seniority (lockstep) *Merit or performance systems *Hybrid profit sharing systems *Retirement annuities *Performance measurement, supervision and disciplinary measures; *De-equitisation: provisions for expulsion from the partnership; *Expulsion, retirement and dissolution; *Good faith, arbitration and mediation; *Drafting for the future, avoiding early revisions and much more - Ensure you understand the necessary considerations of an agreement that not only fulfils legislative requirement, but ensures the attraction, retention and motivation of the best talent for your firm.

Nicholas Wright is chief executive of Wright Son & Pepper LLP, which has been in Gray's Inn, London for approximately 200 years. The firm's main areas of expertise are in commercial, private client, partnership and regulation law. Nicholas has specialised in partnership and professional regulation for over 20 years and has been a member of the Solicitors' Assistance Scheme for most of that time. He has acted as receiver and assisted firms in professional difficulty in an orderly winding up of their activities at the request of the Law Society. He has acted for a number of substantial firms in dealing with regulatory issues, as well as dealing with drafting, restructuring issues and disputes, both for firms and for individual partners. Nicholas is, with Victoria Wright, the editor of that part of Cordery on Legal Services (Butterworths, 1995) which deals with practice structures. He is also the author of the first edition of Partnership Agreements for Law Firms (January 2008) and LLP Conversion for Law Firms(April 2010), published by the Ark Group.