Real Estate Counsel Is Local: Smaller Shares in Every Hub City

A general counsel at a property company who compares commercial real estate law firms by city should begin with where the sector's deal work is actually done. Sartori & Partners data show 2,164 dated deals for real estate sector clients in the 12 months to October 2026, and that work sits less in the big hubs than financial sponsor work does. In New York, 31.7% of the sector's deals were handled with lawyers in the city, against 43.2% of sponsor deals. In London the distance is wider still. For a company that owns buildings in several markets, the useful question is which lawyers do deals where the assets sit, not which office is largest.

Eight cities appear on both top 10 lists: New York, London, Washington, DC, Los Angeles, Frankfurt, Chicago, Boston and San Francisco. In each of them a smaller share of real estate deals than of sponsor deals had lawyers working from the city. London lawyers worked on 12.8% of real estate sector deals against 29.5% of sponsor deals. Washington, DC shows 11.5% against 24.0%, Chicago 5.5% against 16.7%, and Boston 4.0% against 15.5%. The gaps are smallest in Frankfurt, at 2.6 points, and Los Angeles, at 2.7 points.

Each figure is the share of a sector's deals, among those with a known lawyer location, that had lawyers working on them from that city. One deal can count in several cities, so the rows are not a split of the work and are never added together. What the comparison shows is reach: a hub office touches a smaller part of the property sector's deals than of the sponsor sector's. For a general counsel, a panel drawn only from New York and London offices covers less of the real estate work than the same panel would cover for a fund sponsor, so local coverage has to be checked market by market.

Below the first three cities the real estate list flattens quickly. Los Angeles sits at 7.3%, Frankfurt at 5.6% and Chicago at 5.5%. Miami follows at 4.1% and Warsaw at 3.4%, a regional American market and a central European capital inside the top 10. The tenth city on the real estate list sits at 3.4%, while the tenth on the sponsor list sits at 6.9%.

A low floor on a top 10 list means the rest of the work is spread over many more places, each with a small slice. Property law follows the asset: land records, zoning, leases and local lenders keep much of the work near the building. A company with holdings in Florida, Poland or a mid-size American metro should test the local bench directly instead of sending each matter through a hub office and paying for the handoff.

In the Sartori & Partners deal record, the real estate practice did 59.0% of its deals for clients in the real estate sector, 831 deals in 12 months. Seen from the sector's side, the real estate practice was on 38.4% of the sector's deals. The two shares answer different questions. The first says how much of the practice serves property companies; the second says how much of the property sector's legal work runs through real estate lawyers. Corporate and M&A lawyers were on 12.7% of the sector's deals and banking and finance lawyers on 9.6%; practice shares overlap because one deal can carry several.

Asset managers and funds come second for the practice at 11.1%, hospitality at 5.0%, financial sponsors at 4.0%. A real estate partner's book is therefore built mostly on owners, developers and investors much like the general counsel reading this. Sector knowledge is rarely the scarce thing. Conflicts with other property clients in the same city are the practical issue, and they are worth clearing before a deal starts, not during it.

On settled 12-month windows, real estate practice deals rose 9.6%, from 1,276 to 1,398. Deals for real estate sector clients rose 6.8%, from 2,001 to 2,138. All dated deals rose 10.6% over the same windows, and financial sponsor deals rose 8.9%. The practice counts deals for every client sector, not only property companies, so the faster rise also reflects work for funds, hotels and sponsors.

Against that demand, lateral moves by real estate partners fell 12.3%, from 471 to 413. More deal work and fewer partner moves mean a company should not count on a new lateral hire to open up capacity in its city. A company that needs a specific city covered should secure that partner's time in the engagement terms rather than assume capacity.

Sartori & Partners figures put the real estate practice at 821 distinct clients for 1,409 deals in 12 months, about 1.7 deals per client. In the financial sponsors sector the figure is 2.1 deals per distinct client. Deal counts are matters on record, not fees, but the shape is plain: the average property client returns to its real estate lawyers less often in a year than the average sponsor client does.

The firm list above covers all of the sector's work, from property transactions to financing and disputes, not the real estate practice alone; there is no list for the practice inside the sector. Latham & Watkins ranks first in the 101-150 band of deals advised. A property company with a handful of deals a year will rarely be one of the larger relationships at a firm on this list. Fixed staffing, named partners per city and response times written into the terms protect it better than volume can.

Build the outside counsel panel from the map of your assets, not from the map of the large hubs. New York lawyers worked on 31.7% of the sector's deals, so most of the sector's deals with a known lawyer location ran without a New York lawyer on them. Keep one hub firm for portfolio financing and larger deals, then add a local firm, or a named local partner of a national firm, for each market where you hold several buildings. Ask every firm for its deal record in your cities over the past 12 months, not its national total. Clear conflicts with other property owners in each city at the start of the relationship. Write staffing and response times into the terms, because at a few deals a year you will not carry the weight of a sponsor client.