Amarchand Mangaldas has announced variable compensation to salaried staff on Friday with total rewards up to 80 and 95 per cent of maximum levels, as the firm is expecting a record turnover for the 2009-10 financial year.

Amarchand Delhi managing partner Shardul Shroff (pictured) said: "We have paid our bonuses to staff and variable compensation to our retained lawyers across the firm. We have maintained our bonuses and variable compensation - last year and this year is no different."

He stated: "We have paid variable compensation ranging from 80 to 95 per cent of set levels to our lawyers for services rendered in the year 2009-10 in accordance with our usual practice."

Shroff said that Amarchand's salary structure consists of various seniority grades where between around 50 to 60 per cent of remuneration is fixed, with the rest being made up of a variable element. Usually that additional distribution is between 20 and 50 per cent of the base salary, said Shroff.

These bonuses and variable compensation are calculated on the financial figures as at 28 February and are announced and paid out in March of every year.

According to Shroff the firm had recorded its best ever set of financial results this year, which would be finalised on 31 March 2010.

"Like all firms which suffered, we too suffered in the recession. But we did not retrench at all. We rode the crises. We had a slow first six months," he explained.

"We are ending our year 2010, with a turnover better than the best of turnovers of last decade… The recession commenced in the last six months of 08-09 but since we had a pipeline of work, we did our best performance from 1999 to 2009, in 2009."

One Amarchand associate told Legally India that fee-earners were pleased with the bonuses paid out this year.

[Apologies for the delay on the associate survey of last year. We have decided to split the results into a series and hope to publish the first this week.]