Can a UK firm crack the New York market without bending its lockstep partner compensation model?

No, at least not if you're Clifford Chance. CC has a global lockstep for its equity partners except some "super-pointers" in New York.  This anomaly dates to the late '90's merger with Rogers and Wells and represented an expedient, if unstable, response to the high profitability (and high pay) of the New York office.  But when the "New York exception" came up for review by the global partnership recently, New York partners being in the numerical minority, its continuation was rejected.   What to do?  Hem and haw and try to change the subject, essentially.  No, forgive me; the actual plan is to "secure a dramatic increase in profitability this year." Gosh! Why didn't I think of that?

Since part of the technique of achieving this "dramatic increase" involves knee-capping the incentives for the New York office, which should be the firm's first or second most profitable world-wide, I predict we have not seen the end of this exercise in fleeing the inevitable.

As a certain Presidential candidate has suddenly become fond of saying, this is a problem from which "you can run, but you cannot hide."

I believe the choice is increasingly stark:  Hew to your lockstep tradition and abandon any serious hopes of cracking the New York market, or—vice versa.