A team lift-out is priced in four lines. Only one of them is the search fee.

The fee is retained only. There is no contingency structure in the published terms, which means the receiving firm pays for the work of mapping, approach and offer engineering whether or not every principal signs. The retainer is 30 percent of the fee, paid at engagement and kept if the client cancels. These are the 2026 terms for in-house searches. They are used here as the reference structure because they are the only fee terms the firm publishes.

The arithmetic is simple and worth doing in the open. Per 100 of first-year total compensation, the fee is 25 to 30. The retainer, at 30 percent of that fee, is 7.5 to 9. The remaining 17.5 to 21 is payable later in the engagement. These are derived from the published percentages, not separate findings. A team whose members carry combined first-year compensation of a given size carries a fee of that size times 25 to 30 percent.

Two structural points follow. First, the fee base is compensation, so a guarantee that lifts the team’s first-year pay also lifts the fee. A managing partner who raises the floor to win the team is paying a percentage on the raise. Second, the retainer is the money at risk if the firm changes its mind. A lift-out that is approved by a committee late, after outreach has started, leaves the retainer spent and the approach exposed.

Integration starts before the start date and outlasts the guarantee. The pre-start work is conflicts clearance: the departing lawyers disclose client identity and matter summaries to the receiving firm, the firm runs them against its database, and waivers are sought where they are needed. The diligence file sets out what that clearance should produce. A team multiplies the work, because every principal brings a separate client list and the lists overlap each other as well as the firm’s book.

After the start date, the cost is operational. Systems access, billing set-up, marketing and announcement, physical space and malpractice cover are the visible lines. The less visible line is the time of the partners already in the building, who introduce the team to their clients, absorb the matter-opening queue and mediate the first collision over credit. That time is non-billable. It should appear in the model as an hourly cost at the firm’s own internal rate.

Culture is the last line, and it is the cost the model cannot hold. A team that arrived together stays together, which is its value and its risk: it can form a firm inside the firm. Sartori’s published 12-month and 24-month retention rates for placed in-house leaders are 97 percent and 91 percent. They show that a hire who is integrated deliberately mostly stays. They are single-seat figures and do not transfer to teams, which is the subject of the next section.