Swiss Verein

Law firms

Baker McKenzie was the first major law firm to become a Swiss verein in 2004. Since 2009, Swiss vereins have been used in several mergers of large multinational law firms, as they allow regional profit pools and their related tax, accounting and partner compensation systems to remain separate while allowing strategy, branding, information technology and other core functions to be shared between the constituent partnerships. The main advantage of the verein structure is that profits can be shared between constituent partnerships, incentivizing partners to share clients and work between the member partnerships. Most law firms as vereins overcome cost sharing problem in return for work referrals, which allows for the indirect sharing of profits. This issue is not unique to vereins, as some firms structured as a single partnership maintain multiple profit centers so as to limit profit sharing within the partnership. In many cases, this works like a corporate structure, where the Swiss verein is the holding company and the member firms are the subsidiaries, making the centralization, profit and fund management more efficient.