Private Equity Deals Need Two Benches: No Practice Holds Half

Private equity deal lawyers come from two practice groups, not one. Sartori & Partners data show 1,769 dated private equity deals in the 12 months to October 2026. Lawyers from the private equity practice worked on 36.0% of them and lawyers from Corporate & M&A on 32.3%, a gap of only 3.7 points. M&A looks nothing like this: one practice sits on 90.2% of its deals. Deal counts here are matters on record, not fees, so these figures describe who does the work, not who earns most from it. For a firm that wants sponsor mandates, the message is direct: one strong group is not enough.

In the Sartori & Partners deal records, the private equity practice appears on 636 private equity deals and Corporate & M&A on 572. Neither group reaches half of the work: the larger share is 36.0%. One deal can carry both practices, so the two shares overlap and are read side by side, never added.

M&A runs on a single bench. Corporate & M&A lawyers sit on 90.2% of M&A deals, and private equity lawyers on just 1.0%. The same corporate group that dominates a strategic sale shares a sponsor deal with a second team of specialists.

The split follows the shape of the work. A sponsor deal has a fund side, with its buyer structure, its investors and its exit plan, and a company side, with the target, the sale process and the add-on acquisitions that follow. Firms staff the first with sponsor specialists and the second with their corporate generalists, and the records show both groups at work in similar numbers.

A firm with a deep corporate group and no sponsor bench sees private equity work from one side only, and a sponsor boutique inside a firm without corporate depth runs out of hands on the larger deals. The firms that win this work field both teams on the same deal.

Lateral records point the same way. Of the 1,247 lateral moves recorded under the private equity practice in the 12 months to October 2026, 89.3% also carried Corporate & M&A. Seen from the corporate side, 38.2% of the practice's 2,910 moves also carried private equity.

The private equity bench is also more senior when it moves. Partners made up 38.1% of private equity lateral moves in the same 12 months, against 29.9% in Corporate & M&A, where associates carry more of the flow.

In practice, a private equity partner hire is nearly always a corporate hire as well, and a corporate partner with a sponsor book competes in the private equity market whatever title the firm gives the group. Firms building both benches are shopping for the same people, so the candidates who can sit on either side of a sponsor deal are the scarcest and the most contested.

Lateral partner hiring in the private equity practice rose 16.1%, from 404 partners in the 12 months to September 2025 to 469 in the 12 months to September 2026. In Corporate & M&A, partner hiring rose 12.2% over the same windows, from 778 to 873.

Deal volume moved less. Dated private equity deals rose 10.8% on the same settled windows, from 1,604 to 1,778. All dated deals rose 10.6%, from 43,590 to 48,216, so sponsor work grew roughly in line with the deal records as a whole.

Rivals are adding partners on both benches at once. A firm that plans to hire a sponsor partner this year and a corporate partner next year will meet the same competing offers in each search, so the two searches belong in one plan with one timetable.

Financial sponsors appear as the client on 50.1% of private equity deals, against 6.2% of M&A deals and 6.9% of all dated deals. That is 8.1 times their share in M&A. Technology and software, the next client sector, appears on 6.6% of private equity deals, below its 10.6% in M&A.

A deal can carry more than one sector and some carry none, so these shares are compared, never added. The pattern is still clear: on sponsor deals the client is usually a fund that buys and sells companies again and again, and the portfolio company sits across the table or beside it.

That client mix is why the two benches matter. The sponsor relationship tends to sit with the private equity group, while the portfolio companies need corporate work between deals. A firm that covers only one side hands the other side, and often the next mandate from the same fund, to a rival.

Private equity deals that disclose a price have a median value of $2,050 million, the highest of any deal type in the records. M&A deals that disclose a price sit at a median of $1,200 million and leveraged and acquisition finance deals at $1,400 million. The private equity median is 1.7 times the M&A figure.

Read it with care. Only 11.3% of private equity deals disclose a value, against 10.3% of M&A deals, and the deals that publish a price tend to be the larger ones. The median describes the visible end of the book, not every sponsor deal.

Large sponsor deals need numbers on both teams: partners to lead, counsel and associates to run diligence and documents, and the finance lawyers who handle the acquisition debt. A bench that is thin on either side caps the size of deal a firm can take.

Kirkland & Ellis and Latham & Watkins rank first and second by private equity deals advised, both in the 151-250 band. Ropes & Gray and Simpson Thacher & Bartlett follow in the 61-100 band, and every firm from fifth to tenth place sits in the 41-60 band.

Four of these ten advisers also rank in the top 10 of lateral partner hirers in both the private equity and the Corporate & M&A practices: Kirkland & Ellis, Latham & Watkins, Simpson Thacher & Bartlett and Willkie Farr & Gallagher. The busiest sponsor advisers are building both benches at the same time, which is the pattern the deal records reward.

With six firms sharing the 41-60 band, the lower half of this list is close. A firm just outside it can move up with a few partner hires, provided they arrive on both sides of the sponsor deal.

Plan two benches, not one. With private equity lawyers on 36.0% of private equity deals and corporate lawyers on 32.3%, a sponsor practice is a joint venture between two groups. Set staffing, credit and pricing so that both groups win when a sponsor deal comes in.

Recruit from the overlap. Since 89.3% of private equity lateral moves also carry corporate work, test every corporate candidate for sponsor deals and every sponsor candidate for corporate depth; the lawyers who pass both tests are worth a premium.

Move early. Private equity partner hiring rose 16.1% and corporate partner hiring rose 12.2% on settled windows, so rival firms are already in the market for the same people.

Follow the sponsor, not just the deal. Funds are the client on 50.1% of private equity deals, and the median disclosed deal runs to $2,050 million. Sartori & Partners figures point to a market where the firm that keeps both the fund and its portfolio companies inside one building wins the repeat work.