DLA Piper has announced that it will reward its top-performing UK associates with a bonus that is just half what they were expecting.

Under DLA Piper's bonus scheme rules, 50% of each fee earner's bonus is conditional on the firm hitting profit targets. However this year it missed its target, so UK Managing Partner Andrew Darwin emailed staff on Wednesday to break the bad news.

DLA Piper yesterday

Some insiders tell RollOnFriday that the firm's UK performance is likely to be appreciably down on the previous year. But others claim that the firm missed its target by just 1%, and point out that only 230 associates managed to get a bonus at all this year.

Darwin seemed to appreciate the perceived unfairness of the system, pointing out that it will be changed in future so that individual performance will amount to 75% of the possible bonus rather than 50%. A spokesman for the firm said that "we keep our bonus arrangements under review to ensure that they achieve the right balance between motivation and reward for performance and we believe we now have a fairer system in place". So, jam tomorrow then.