As a young partner, Neil Barr was tapped to serve on the compensation committee at Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP, he said on this week’s Drinks With The Deal podcast. That gave Barr a broad perspective on the firm, he said, as did his work as a tax lawyer, where Comcast Corp. (CMCSA) was a key client from his years as an associate.

Barr took over as Davis Polk’s managing partner and chair when his predecessor, Thomas J. Reid, moved to Comcast as chief legal officer in 2019, and the next year the law firm moved from a pure lockstep compensation to one that takes several factors into account in setting compensation.

The shift was a response to changes in the legal industry. “Talent in this market is much more mobile than it ever has been,” Barr said, which is both an opportunity and a threat to law firms.

“We think with the right set of incentives, the right structure of a compensation system, the right performance evaluations and the cohesiveness of the partnership that we can walk a path here where we can address the market-facing issues while continuing to providing a culture of this firm that’s professionally satisfying for all of people who work here,” he added.

Barr also discussed studying tax as a student at Georgetown University Law Center with Martin Ginsburg, the husband of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and an exceptionally gifted teacher and lawyer.

“It was one of the transformational relationships of my life to have had the ability to learn tax from Marty Ginsburg,” Barr said. “I fell in love with it as a discipline. I liked it because it was business, it was case law, it was regulatory, it was statutory, and so the depth of what you got in a tax practice and the cross-disciplinary nature of it was tremendously appealing to me.”

Our conversation with Neil Barr is the first in a four-podcast miniseries with law firm leaders.

Listen to the podcast with Neil Barr below:

More podcasts from The Deal are available on iTunes, Spotify and on TheDeal.com.