Law Firms That Promote and Hire Partners: Only Three Do Both

Ask which are the law firms that promote the most partners, then ask which hire the most lateral partners, and the answers come back as two different lists. Sartori & Partners data show that firms promoted 2,955 lawyers to partner and hired 3,749 lateral partners over the same 12 months, June 2025 to May 2026, or 0.79 promotions for each lateral partner. Set the top 10 promoters beside the top 10 partner hirers and only three names appear on both. The rest divide into firms that buy partners without a place among the promoters and firms that promote in volume while hiring partners at a modest pace. For a firm leader planning partner recruitment, that division tells you who bids against you for lateral partners and who mostly grows its own.

Kirkland & Ellis heads both lists: 1st for partners promoted, in the 61-100 band, and 1st for lateral partners hired, in the 61-100 band. No other firm reaches that band on the promotion side; every other name there sits in the 21-40 band. DLA Piper ranks 6th for promotions and 3rd for partner hires, in the 61-100 band. Dentons ranks 7th for promotions and 4th for partner hires, in the 41-60 band.

Two notes on reading the lists. Both count individual lawyers: partners who arrived as one team in the same quarter are in the market totals but not in a firm's rank. And the windows differ, because promotion figures stop at May 2026, the last complete month, while the hiring list runs to October 2026; the two periods overlap for most of their length. For a partner candidate at one of these three firms, both doors are open. An approach has to beat a promotion route the firm visibly uses, and a firm that hires at this pace also sets the going rate for lateral partners in its practices.

Seven of the ten firms on the partner-hiring list do not appear among the top 10 promoters, and three of them show the buying pattern most clearly. Greenberg Traurig ranks 2nd for lateral partner hires, in the 61-100 band. Its gap on the promotion side is narrower than the lists suggest: it promoted in the 21-40 band, the same band as the firms ranked 2nd to 10th, so it falls outside on rank rather than scale. Partners were about 30% of its lateral hires, against 27.7% across all firms.

Paul Hastings is the plainest buyer in the group. It ranks 5th for partner hires, in the 41-60 band, while its own promotions sit in the 6-10 band. Partners were about 35% of its lateral hires, and its time to partner reads longer than the market's. Sidley Austin, 7th for partner hires, is the third firm in this group.

In Sartori & Partners figures, these buyers draw much of their intake from finance and transactional work: banking and finance accounts for about 35% of the hires at Paul Hastings. For a firm hiring partners in those practices, this group is the competition that matters. They are in the market all year, so a partner search that runs slowly will meet one of them at the offer stage.

Norton Rose Fulbright ranks 2nd for partners promoted, behind only Kirkland & Ellis. On lateral partner hires it sits in the 11-25 group, with partner hires in the 21-40 band: active, but a step below the firms that buy at scale.

Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP & Affiliates shows the pattern more sharply. It ranks 8th for promotions, in the 21-40 band, but sits in the 51-100 group of partner hirers. Partners were about 15% of its lateral hires, against 27.7% for the market, while associates were about 70%.

FBT Gibbons is the exception on size. It is the only firm of 400-999 lawyers on the promotion list, in the same 21-40 band as much larger firms. As a partner hirer it sits in the 51-100 group and, across all levels, in the 101-200 group, yet partners were about 40% of its lateral hires. It hires few lawyers laterally, and many of those few are partners.

For a firm recruiting partners, these promoters are a source more than a rival. Each promotion round leaves senior associates and counsel who were close but not chosen, and a firm that promotes in this volume produces more of them than most. Those lawyers are the candidates to call, and with partner hiring at their pace, these firms are less often the one across the table in a lateral partner search.

The named lists sit inside a market that leans toward buying. In the Sartori & Partners lateral database, firms took on 1.3 lateral partners for every lawyer they promoted to partner in the 12 months to May 2026. Partner hiring is also expanding: settled 12-month lateral partner moves rose 8.4%, from 3,558 to 3,858.

Promotions gather in the largest firms but do not stop there. Firms of 1,000+ lawyers made 49.9% of new partners. Firms of 400-999 lawyers made 29.5%, while taking 23.4% of all lateral hires. That middle tier promotes in volume, but spread across many firms, which is why a single name from it reaches the promotion top 10. A firm that judges its own partner pipeline against the named lists alone misses where most new partners are actually made.

First, map your competition by list, not by reputation. If you hire partners in the practices where Greenberg Traurig, Paul Hastings or Sidley Austin buy, plan for a contested search and decide your offer range before the first meeting, not after a rival bid lands.

Second, recruit from the promoters on their calendar. January 2026 alone carried 56.4% of partner promotions in the 12 months to May 2026, so the weeks after that round are when lawyers passed over at a heavy promoter are most open to a call. Third, treat the three firms on both lists differently: a partner there has a working internal route, and a move has to offer something that route cannot. Finally, budget for buying. With firms making 0.79 partners for each lateral partner they hired, a growth plan that relies on promotion alone runs against how the market fills its partnerships.