Partner intelligence · Book of business
How Portable Is a Partner Book of Business? By Practice
Portability is not a matter of effort or personality — it is structurally determined by the practice you work in. Across more than 2,600 partner-level interviews, Insurance books were assessed as highly portable more than half the time. Private Equity books were assessed as substantially institutional more than one quarter of the time. Disputes books split almost evenly between highly portable and low portability. The mechanism is the same in every case: who holds the client relationship, and at what level of the client organisation does the instruction decision actually sit.
Same effort. Same seniority. The book still travels — or it does not.
Pick a practice. The chance the book is highly portable swings nearly five-fold across the spectrum — and almost none of that swing is about the partner.
Insurance partners assessed as highly portable — the strongest single-practice result in the dataset. Sartori Global, N = 23
From 52% to 11% — the same word, “portable,” means something structurally different in each practice. Every figure here is from our own interview corpus and cited below. See the dataset and method notes.
What 400+ portability conversations establish.
Portability was the most discussed single topic in our interview corpus — surfacing in more than 400 conversations. These are the headline figures from that dataset.
- 400+
- Partner conversations in our dataset where portability was the primary topic discussed — the single most common subject in 2,600+ interviews.
- Sartori Global interview corpus
- 52%
- Insurance partners assessed as highly portable — the strongest result across any practice group in our dataset.
- Sartori Global, N = 23 assessed Insurance partners
- 26%
- Private Equity partners where the book was assessed as substantially institutional (non-portable) — more than three times the Corporate/M&A rate.
- Sartori Global, N = 27 assessed PE partners
- 43%
- Banking & Finance partners assessed as highly portable, with an institutional rate of only ~6% — one of the most portable large-cohort practices in our dataset.
- Sartori Global, N = 88 assessed B&F partners
Portability is not a matter of effort or personality — it is structurally determined by the practice you work in.
Which practices produce the most portable books?
In our interviews with 2,600+ partners, portability assessments divide cleanly by practice. The table below shows the distribution for every practice group with a sufficient assessed cohort.
The table draws on portability classifications made during Sartori’s interview process. “Highly portable” means the partner and the search team assessed the book as likely to follow materially to a new platform. “Partially portable” means significant but not dominant transfer was expected. “Low portability” means the book was assessed as substantially anchored to the current firm. “Institutional” means the book was assessed as entirely or almost entirely non-transferable — sitting with the firm, not the individual. “Not assessed” means portability was not classified in the conversation record and is excluded from the percentages below. All percentages are of the assessed cohort for that practice (denominator = n assessed; excludes “not assessed” conversations), so the four columns sum to approximately 100% in every row.
How does portability compare across every major practice group?
Sortable — click any column header to rank the practices by that measure.
| Practice | n (assessed) | Highly portable | Partially portable | Low portability | Institutional |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Insurance | 23 | 52% | 30% | 13% | 4% |
| Technology / Data | 43 | 42% | 49% | 9% | — |
| Banking & Finance | 88 | 43% | 38% | 14% | 6% |
| Regulatory | 29 | 38% | 48% | 14% | — |
| Employment | 19 | 37% | 37% | 26% | — |
| Restructuring & Insolvency | 47 | 34% | 51% | 11% | 4% |
| White Collar / Investigations | 26 | 35% | 38% | 23% | 4% |
| Real Estate | 40 | 32% | 50% | 18% | — |
| Corporate / M&A | 187 | 32% | 42% | 19% | 7% |
| Projects / Energy / Infrastructure | 50 | 28% | 60% | 10% | 2% |
| Capital Markets | 58 | 29% | 60% | 9% | 2% |
| Antitrust / Competition | 34 | 29% | 41% | 26% | 3% |
| IP | 84 | 25% | 42% | 26% | 7% |
| Disputes / Litigation | 153 | 29% | 39% | 29% | 4% |
| Private Equity | 27 | 33% | 26% | 15% | 26% |
| Arbitration | 18 | 11% | 61% | 22% | 6% |
The gradient is real. Across our conversations, Insurance and Banking & Finance produced the strongest highly-portable rates among major practices, while Private Equity produced the highest institutional rate by a significant margin. Arbitration produced the lowest highly-portable rate of any practice with a sufficient assessed cohort. The following sections explain the mechanism behind each cluster.
Where each practice sits on the portability spectrum.
The same data, arranged as a spectrum: portable books at one end, institutional books at the other, and the mandate-driven transactional practices clustered in the partially portable middle. The position of each practice is set by one structural question — at what level of the client does the instruction decision sit.
Personally portableInstitutionally anchored
- The portable end Insurance, Banking & Finance, Technology/Data. A named individual at the client — risk director, credit officer, in-house counsel — holds the instruction. When the partner moves, the instruction follows.
- The mandate-driven middle Corporate/M&A, Capital Markets, Projects, IP. Books travel in part but rarely whole — the decision involves a deal team, a syndicate desk, or a global procurement policy as well as the partner.
- The institutional end Private Equity, and the panel-dependent tail of Disputes and Arbitration. The mandate vests in the platform at management-committee or panel level. The individual’s move does not sever it.
Why do Insurance and Banking & Finance books travel best?
Both practices share the same structural trait: a direct, personal instruction relationship between the partner and a named individual at the client. When that individual is the decision-maker, portability follows.
In our interviews with 23 Insurance partners with an assessed portability profile, over half were classified as highly portable — the strongest single-practice result in the entire dataset. The mechanism described consistently was the same: the instructing contact at an insurer or policyholder is typically a specific risk director, in-house head of claims, or line-of-business legal officer who treats the external counsel relationship as personal. When the partner moves, the instruction follows because the decision-maker’s loyalty is to the individual, not to the letterhead. Panel constraints exist, but they are frequently navigated through rate grandfathering and relationship continuity.
Banking & Finance (88 assessed partners) shows a similar dynamic at comparable intensity. Around 43% of that cohort were assessed as highly portable, and the institutional rate was only around 6% — remarkably low for a practice so often assumed to be bank-led and institutionally sticky. The explanation given repeatedly: large banking clients appoint relationship partners, not just relationship firms, and a credit officer or structured-finance counsel who has been the client’s primary contact through multiple deal cycles carries real individual authority over the instruction decision. The bank’s legal-panel process creates friction, but it is usually surmountable if the relationship is genuine and the new platform has equivalent creditworthiness in the market.
What makes a book travel: the instruction-decision anatomy.
Every portability outcome resolves to one question. Trace where the instruction decision sits inside the client organisation, and the rest follows.
- Who instructs? A named individual — risk director, credit officer, GC — or a committee / panel / procurement function.
- At what level? Personal discretion over external counsel or a decision made above the relationship, at management-committee or group-legal level.
- Personal → portable Loyalty vests in the individual. The instruction follows the partner. Insurance, Banking & Finance, GC-relationship Disputes.
- Institutional → anchored Loyalty vests in the platform. The mandate stays. Private Equity, panel Disputes, procurement-led IP.
The practical implication: for both practices, the lateral value proposition centres on the quality and depth of the specific client relationship. A broad network of casual contacts in the insurance or banking market is not the same as two or three deep instruction relationships with decision-makers who have the authority to follow. Partners in both practices frequently distinguish these cleanly in conversations — and the portability outcomes in our data reflect that discipline.
When the partner moves, the instruction follows because the decision-maker’s loyalty is to the individual, not to the letterhead.
Why is Private Equity book portability so different?
Private Equity produced the highest institutional classification rate in our dataset — more than three times the Corporate/M&A rate. The reason is the structural architecture of the client relationship, not the personal quality of the partner.
In our conversations with 27 assessed Private Equity partners, roughly 26% were assessed as substantially institutional — meaning the book was unlikely to transfer in any meaningful volume regardless of the partner’s effort. That figure was the highest institutional rate of any practice group in our dataset. The explanation was consistent and structural.
Private equity funds mandate their primary external counsel at management-committee or general counsel level, not at the portfolio-company level. The firm holding the fund’s main financing mandate, the fund-formation work, or the LP advisory relationship is appointed as an institutional partner of the fund, not as a personal relationship with a specific deal lawyer. When that appointing relationship sits at management-committee level, an individual partner’s move does not sever it. The fund may send the departing partner discrete deal work as a matter of relationship continuity, but the core instructing relationship stays with the platform.
How far Private Equity sits from the field: the institutional rate.
The institutional rate — the share of books assessed as entirely or almost entirely non-transferable — is low and tightly clustered across most practices. Private Equity is the outlier, at more than three times the rate of the practices it is most often compared to. Click or hover a marker for the cohort behind it.
Insurance — 4% institutional
Among the lowest in the dataset, consistent with the strongest highly-portable rate. The relationship is personal.
Sartori Global, N = 23 assessedThis does not mean PE partners have no lateral value. Across the same 27 assessed conversations, around a third were assessed as highly portable — typically where the partner had a genuine origination role with a specific sponsor, or had developed a mid-market PE relationship that sat primarily at the partner-level rather than platform-level. But the modal PE lateral move, in our experience, is better framed as an expertise and deal-flow acquisition rather than a book transfer. Firms hiring PE laterals that build their business case on portable revenue in the same way they would for Insurance or Banking & Finance are frequently disappointed at the 12-month review.
The practical implication for candidates: be precise about which clients are personally portable and which are institutionally anchored. Conflating the two is the single most common portability overstatement in our conversations, and firms diligencing the hire will probe it.
The modal PE lateral move is better framed as an expertise and deal-flow acquisition rather than a book transfer.
Why does Disputes/Litigation split so evenly between portable and non-portable?
Across 153 assessed Disputes and Litigation partners, highly portable and low portability outcomes were almost equally common. The same practice, opposite outcomes. The difference is client mix — specifically whether the book runs on GC relationships or on panel instructions.
In our interviews with 153 assessed Disputes and Litigation partners, roughly 29% were assessed as highly portable and roughly 29% as low portability, with around 39% falling in the partially portable middle. That near-equal split is unique in the dataset — most practices produce a clear modal outcome. The bimodal structure in Disputes reflects two genuinely different client archetypes operating within the same practice label.
Two archetypes, one practice label.
The same “Disputes” label covers two books that behave in opposite ways. Whether a given partner’s book travels depends on which one they have built.
Highly portable — ~29%
The relationship-built book
Three to six in-house GCs allocate work on a direct personal basis, typically without a formal panel. The relationship is personal trust built over years of bet-the-company litigation or regulatory crisis work. When the partner moves, the GC follows — confidence sits in the individual, not the platform.
Low portability — ~29%
The panel-dependent book
Volume runs through institutional clients — financial institutions, public bodies, large insurers — that appoint counsel through formal panel processes at group-legal or procurement level. Panel approval is made above the GC, governed by rate benchmarking, conflict policy, and reputational risk. An individual’s preference cannot override a procurement cycle.
The first archetype is the relationship-built book: a disputes partner who has developed a concentrated practice around three to six in-house GCs who allocate work on a direct personal basis, typically without a formal panel process. For these clients, the external counsel relationship is a personal trust relationship built over years of bet-the-company litigation or regulatory crisis work. When the partner moves, the GC follows, because the GC’s confidence sits in the individual, not the platform. In our data, this pattern accounts for the highly portable cohort.
The second archetype is the panel-dependent book: a disputes partner whose volume runs through institutional clients — financial institutions, public bodies, large insurers — that appoint counsel through formal panel processes at the group-legal or procurement level. Panel approval is a decision made above the GC level, governed by rate benchmarking, conflict policy, and reputational risk criteria. An individual partner’s preference carries weight at the margin, but it cannot override a panel procurement cycle. This pattern accounts for the low portability cohort.
In our conversations where the “Client Portability Uncertainty” objection appeared — in interviews across our full dataset, this was the sixth most frequent objection archetype overall — Disputes and Litigation accounted for roughly 22% of those instances, the highest of any practice. Partners in this practice are more likely than any other group to articulate genuine uncertainty about their own portability when pressed, which is itself evidence of the bimodal reality.
The same practice, opposite outcomes. The difference is client mix.
Where do Corporate/M&A, IP, and the transactional practices sit?
Corporate/M&A, IP, Capital Markets, and the project-finance practices produce portability outcomes that sit between the extremes — but with distinct patterns worth disaggregating.
How portable is a Corporate/M&A book in practice?
Corporate/M&A was the largest practice group in our dataset at 187 assessed partners. Around 32% were assessed as highly portable, 42% as partially portable, and 19% as low portability, with an institutional rate of around 7% — notably higher than Insurance or Banking & Finance but much lower than Private Equity. The pattern reflects the heterogeneity of the Corporate client base: some relationships are deeply personal (founder-owned businesses, entrepreneurial mid-market companies, specific in-house deal teams), and others are institutionally managed (large multinationals with global legal procurement policies). The same partner may hold both within a single book, which explains the frequency of partially portable outcomes.
Corporate/M&A partners also appeared most frequently in conversations about billing rate concerns — specifically the “Billing Rate Inflation Risk” objection archetype, where established clients were built at a lower rate structure and would not absorb the target firm’s higher standard rates. This adds a layer of conditional portability to the Corporate/M&A picture that pure classification data does not fully capture: a book may be relationship-portable but economically anchored at its current rate level.
What is the IP portability picture?
Intellectual Property (84 assessed partners) showed a pattern of spread across all four categories: around 25% highly portable, 42% partially portable, and 26% low portability, with a 7% institutional rate. IP books sit at the intersection of relationship and institutional dynamics. Patent prosecution and portfolio-management mandates are often institutionally managed at GC or IP-director level by large technology and pharmaceutical companies through global panels; those books are difficult to move. Litigation-heavy IP practices, and those built around specific in-house IP counsels who move between companies, can be highly personal and portable. The 7% institutional rate — matching Corporate/M&A — reflects the panel-driven tail.
How do Capital Markets and Projects compare?
Capital Markets (58 assessed partners) had a high partially portable rate at around 60%, with a low-portability rate of only 9% and a highly portable rate of 29%. This suggests that Capital Markets books frequently travel in part but rarely entirely, consistent with a practice where the client relationship is real but the instruction decision also involves the bank’s syndicate desk or deal team, not just the issuer’s general counsel. Projects / Energy / Infrastructure (50 assessed partners) showed a very similar profile: 60% partially portable, 28% highly portable, and 10% low portability — underscoring that mandate-driven transactional practices tend to cluster in the partially portable middle.
What do the book ranges look like by practice?
Portability is one dimension of the lateral value equation. The second is the absolute size of the book. In our dataset, medians cluster in the USD 2–3m band across most practices, but the range is wide.
The table below draws on book-of-business disclosures within the same interview corpus. Figures are the range observed (from the lowest to the highest stated book) and the median within each currency group. Currencies are not cross-converted; each row states its own currency. These are partner-stated figures, de-identified, and reported as banded ranges because the spread within any practice is large enough that a single median number is misleading without the range.
What are the typical book sizes disclosed across practices?
| Practice | Currency | n (stated book) | Low (m) | Median (m) | High (m) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Disputes / Litigation | USD | 94 | 0.1 | 2.15 | 37.0 |
| Disputes / Litigation | GBP | 21 | 0.1 | 1.58 | 15.0 |
| Corporate / M&A | USD | 76 | 0.17 | 2.15 | 50.0 |
| Corporate / M&A | EUR | 26 | 0.45 | 1.6 | 4.55 |
| Banking & Finance | USD | 34 | 0.09 | 2.5 | 35.0 |
| Banking & Finance | GBP | 15 | 0.5 | 2.5 | 5.5 |
| Private Equity | USD | 18 | 1.0 | 5.0 | 51.0 |
| Insurance | USD | 15 | 0.7 | 4.0 | 20.0 |
| Capital Markets | USD | 24 | 1.0 | 2.75 | 30.0 |
| IP | USD | 52 | 0.05 | 2.0 | 20.0 |
| Restructuring & Insolvency | USD | 29 | 0.5 | 2.6 | 31.0 |
| Projects / Energy / Infrastructure | USD | 24 | 0.2 | 3.0 | 13.5 |
Several structural observations from the ranges. First, the upper tail in most practices is driven by a small number of exceptional books; the median is a much better guide to what a typical partner carries into a lateral conversation. Second, Private Equity shows the highest median USD book of any major practice at around USD 5m, but as the portability data shows, a significant share of that value is institutional. Third, Insurance carries a USD median of around USD 4m — which, combined with the 52% highly-portable rate, produces the strongest expected portable value of any practice group in the dataset. The combination of size and portability probability matters as much as either figure alone.
What does this mean for a partner making a lateral move?
Portability is a starting position in a negotiation, not a forecast. What firms pay for and what partners receive will both be shaped by how clearly the portability picture is communicated and stress-tested before an offer is made. Switch sides:
A structural advantage is only an advantage if it is communicated precisely.
How should a partner in a portable practice approach the conversation?
Partners in Insurance, Banking & Finance, or similarly portable practices enter lateral conversations with a structural advantage: their book is demonstrably more likely to follow than the market average. That advantage is only realised if it is communicated precisely. The most compelling portability case is a short list of named decision-makers at key clients — the risk director, the credit head, the managing director — who have the authority to redirect instructions, combined with a realistic view of what percentage of the book each relationship represents. Vague claims about “strong relationships” carry no weight in the due diligence a hiring firm will run.
Across more than 400 conversations where portability was the primary subject in our dataset, the most frequent complication was not that the book was unportable — it was that the partner had not disaggregated it cleanly before the conversation. Mixing highly portable personal relationships with panel-dependent institutional revenue in the same number tends to produce disappointed hiring firms at the 18-month revenue review.
What questions do partners ask about portability in lateral conversations?
In our classified question corpus from the same dataset, the “Portable Book of Business & Client Retention” question archetype appeared in around 7% of all classified conversations — making it one of the more frequent substantive lines of inquiry from candidates. The most common forms: whether the firm has a portability threshold as a condition of an equity offer, how long a ramp-up period is available before full revenue expectation applies, and whether the firm is willing to support a new-build rather than requiring an immediate book transfer. The question skewed heavily toward Corporate/M&A, Disputes, and IP — consistent with the partially portable profiles in those practices, where the outcome genuinely is uncertain.
A different value frame: expertise transfer, not a committed revenue number.
What should a partner in a sticky practice realistically expect?
A Private Equity partner, an Arbitration specialist, or a partner with a predominantly partially-portable book should enter the lateral conversation with a different value frame: expertise transfer, deal-flow access, and platform capability, rather than a committed revenue number. Firms in these practices that base their hire case on a specific portable book figure are setting up a structural misalignment. The most durable lateral moves in these practices are priced on a contribution expectation — the revenue the platform will help the partner build over three to five years — rather than a year-one book transfer.
This framing matters for the guarantee negotiation as well. A three-year guarantee for a highly-portable Insurance partner is underwriting a real and measurable transfer event. The same structure for a PE partner with an institutional book is a very different risk for the hiring firm. Partners who understand their own practice’s structural position enter that negotiation with more credibility, not less.
Vague claims about “strong relationships” carry no weight in the due diligence a hiring firm will run.
When does billing-rate uplift undermine book portability?
A book may be relationship-portable but rate-anchored. The most under-discussed portability constraint in our conversations was not the client relationship — it was what happens to that relationship when the rate card moves up sharply at the new firm.
The “Billing Rate Inflation Risk” objection appeared in around 85 conversations in our dataset — around 3% of classified objections — and was concentrated in Disputes, Corporate/M&A, IP, and Projects. The concern is structurally simple: a partner’s existing client base was built at a specific rate level. Those clients have a rate tolerance anchored to that history. When the partner moves to a higher-rate platform, the firm’s standard billing card may sit 10–30% above the rate the client has been paying for years.
How a relationship-portable book becomes rate-anchored.
The relationship can be fully portable and the book still fail to travel — if the rate problem is left unsolved. The sequence is the same every time.
- 1 Built at a rate. The client base was established at a specific rate level and carries a tolerance anchored to that history.
- 2 The card jumps. The target firm’s standard card sits 10–30% above what the client has paid for years.
- 3 Resolution, or not. Rate grandfathering, a client-level exception, or a gradual 18–24-month absorption — or the firm refuses all flexibility.
- → The conversion. Refuse flexibility, and a relationship-portable book becomes a rate-anchored one — discovered at the first client billing conversation.
The client relationship may be fully portable — the GC will follow the partner wherever they go — but only if the rate problem is solved. In those conversations, the typical resolution routes were rate grandfathering for an agreed transition period, a specific client-level rate exception, or an instruction to the partner to absorb the uplift gradually over 18–24 months. Firms that refuse all rate flexibility effectively convert a relationship-portable book into a rate-anchored one — and then discover it at the first client billing conversation.
The practical implication for both sides: portability analysis should always include a rate stress test alongside the relationship assessment. For candidates, that means knowing precisely what each key client pays today, what the target firm’s standard card would imply for that client, and whether a rate continuity arrangement is available. For firms, it means asking the question explicitly in the due-diligence conversation rather than leaving it to the partner to raise it. Rate silence in the lateral process is rarely a signal that no rate problem exists.
A book may be relationship-portable but rate-anchored.
Every figure here traces to one cited source: our own interview corpus.
No external rankings, no recruiter surveys, no leaked schedules. Every number on this page is a banded aggregate from Sartori Global's proprietary interview dataset — de-identified so no individual lawyer, client, or firm is identifiable. The entries below document the dataset and the method notes that govern how it may be read.
The dataset and its method notes
3 referencesPortability classifications are directional assessments made by the search team during the interview process — not a clinical instrument. All counts are rounded or banded to prevent small-cell re-identification, currencies are not cross-converted, and the corpus carries the survivorship bias of any voluntary engagement dataset, skewed to senior lateral candidates at international, US, and Magic Circle firms. Treat every figure as a banded estimate, not a point prediction for an individual partner’s situation. For the compensation economics a portable book is ultimately measured against, see partner pay at the Am Law top 50.
Book of business portability: common questions
Why does practice type predict portability more reliably than book size does?
Because the underlying economics of client loyalty differ structurally across practices, not just in degree. An Insurance partner's clients typically retain counsel by direct relationship with the individual practitioner — when the partner moves, the instruction follows. A Private Equity partner's clients retain the fund's primary relationship firm as an institution; the fund's counsel decision is made at management-committee level, not by the portfolio company's preference for an individual. Across more than 400 conversations in our interview corpus where portability was the primary subject, this structural gap was the most consistent explanatory variable — more predictive than book size, seniority, or firm tier.
How portable is a Disputes/Litigation book of business in practice?
The Disputes data is bimodal, and that is the key fact about the practice. In our interviews across 153 Disputes and Litigation partners with an assessed portability profile, highly portable and low portability outcomes were equally common — each accounting for roughly 29% of the assessed cohort — with a substantial partially portable middle. Disputes books are relationship-built, which favours portability, but they are also frequently panel-driven or institutionally anchored at the GC level, which suppresses it. Whether a given Disputes partner's book travels well depends heavily on the client mix: a practice built on a handful of long-standing in-house GC relationships often moves cleanly; a practice built on recurring institutional panel instructions rarely does.
Is Private Equity book portability really that low, given how relationship-driven the practice sounds?
The relationship is real, but it usually runs to the fund manager or GC rather than the individual counsel. In our conversations with 27 assessed Private Equity partners, the institutional classification — meaning the book was assessed as substantially non-portable — applied to roughly 26% of the assessed cohort. That is more than three times the institutional rate seen in practices like Corporate/M&A. The explanation offered consistently in those conversations: PE clients mandate through fund-level relationships, which vest in the firm that holds the broader financing and fund-formation mandate, not the individual partner's personal network. When a PE partner moves, the lateral value proposition is typically expertise and deal-flow access, not a transferable revenue stream.
What makes an Insurance or Banking and Finance book more portable than most?
Both practices share a structural trait: the instructing contact is often a specific individual at the client — a risk director, a credit officer, a head of legal for a line of business — who is personally invested in the counsel relationship and has discretion over external instruction decisions. In our Insurance cohort (23 assessed partners), over half were assessed as highly portable, the strongest single-practice result in our dataset. Banking and Finance (88 assessed partners) showed a similar pattern: around 43% were assessed as highly portable, with a low institutional rate of around 6%. Neither practice is immune to panel constraints or institutional anchoring, but the personal-relationship mechanism is structurally more present than in PE or heavily institutionalised Disputes work.
Does book size change the portability picture, or does practice type dominate?
Practice type dominates at the structural level, but book size shapes the risk profile of the move. A large Insurance book is still more portable than a large PE book, because the practice type determines the client loyalty mechanism. But within a practice, larger books carry a higher variance: a USD 10m+ Disputes book is more likely to include institutional anchors and panel relationships that compress portability, while a USD 1-2m Disputes book built on a tight GC network may travel almost entirely. In our dataset, book medians cluster in the USD 2-3m band (or local currency equivalent) across most practices; claims about any specific figure should be treated as banded estimates, not point predictions for an individual partner's situation.
Keep reading
Associate Rates Leaked: What Court Filings Reveal
The rate economics that sit behind every lateral compensation conversation — what public filings show about how firms price their labour.
Read the associate rates analysisLateral Partner Hiring
The full framework for how firms price, diligence, and integrate partner laterals — including how portability analysis fits into the offer process.
Read the lateral hiring guidePartner Pay at the Am Law Top 50
The compensation economics that a portable book is ultimately measured against — what equity partner profit looks like across the elite US market.
Read partner pay at the Am Law top 50Submit Your CV
Senior lawyers considering a lateral move can share their background with our research desk for a confidential market conversation.
Submit your CV for a confidential discussionContact Sartori & Partners
Law firms and in-house teams working on a partner-level search can reach our team directly to discuss mandates and market availability.
Talk to the teamInsights
Market intelligence, compensation data, and partner-level recruiting analysis from Sartori Global's research desk.
Back to all insightsThe unsentimental view of your book
Planning a lateral move, or diligencing a partner hire? We can run the portability analysis.
We have had 400+ conversations where portability was the primary topic. We know what travels, what stays, and where the rate risk sits. Tell us the practice and the market.