Niche Specialties Where a Few Firms Dominate Lateral Hiring, 2026

Look for the law firms that hire the most fund finance lawyers and you find a short list. Sartori & Partners data show that over the 12 months to October 2026 the ten most active hirers took 56.3% of fund finance lateral moves, against 19.9% in banking and finance as a whole and 12.9% across the market. Fund finance is not an outlier. In insurance defense the top 10 took 50.0%, in debt capital markets 48.0%, in secondaries and fund transactions 47.5% and in merger control 50.0%. For a firm planning a niche hire, the competition is not the market at large. It is a handful of named firms that recruit in the field year after year.

The rankings below count individual lateral hires: lawyers who arrived as one team in the same quarter sit in the totals but not in a firm's rank. A specialty is the lawyer's own focus today, so it is set against its practice by shares, not by subtracting counts. The records are public law-firm announcements, firm websites and professional profiles, checked monthly.

The gap to the wider market is large. In fund finance the top 10 share is 4.4 times the market figure and 2.8 times the figure for banking and finance. Even the least concentrated of the five, secondaries, sits 34.6 points above the market. These are small fields. Fund finance drew 119 lateral moves in 12 months across 48 hiring firms; banking and finance drew 1,964 moves across 391 firms.

Firm size explains part of the pattern. Firms of 1,000+ lawyers took 90.2% of secondaries moves, 85.2% of merger control moves and 83.3% of debt capital markets moves, against 53.6% across the market. Where the work runs through a few large platforms, the hiring does too. For a firm outside that group, the ten names on each list are the offers a candidate will hold yours against.

Sidley Austin and Paul Hastings head the fund finance list, both in the 11-20 band of hires, followed by King & Spalding and Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson. Further down, London and offshore names such as Simmons & Simmons and Maples Group make the top 10. Of the ten firms that hire the most laterals across all practices, only Paul Hastings appears on the fund finance list. A firm that benchmarks its fund finance search against the market ranking is watching the wrong rivals.

The geography explains the mix of names. London took 26.1% of fund finance moves, an index of 282 against the market, and New York took 31.1%, an index of 210. Demand is moving up. Fund finance hiring rose 34.1% year on year, from 91 to 122 moves across the settled 12-month windows, while banking and finance rose 14.1%.

A rising field with a short list of hirers means the same few firms bid for each senior candidate. A firm hiring in fund finance should expect counter-offers and should know, before the first call, which of these names the candidate already works for or has spoken to.

Insurance defense ties merger control as the second most concentrated of the five, with the top 10 taking 50.0% of moves, but the names belong to a different world. Wilson Elser Moskowitz Edelman & Dicker heads the list, followed by The Chartwell Law Offices, Kennedys Law and Clyde & Co, and the first six firms all sit in the 11-20 band. The only firm from the market's top 10 on this list is Gordon Rees Scully Mansukhani, 5th here and first on the specialty's partner list.

Here concentration does not mean large firms. Firms of 1,000+ lawyers took 37.5% of insurance defense moves, against 53.6% across the market, while firms of 150-399 lawyers took 28.8%, against 13.3%. The specialists that set this market come in every size.

The pool is getting smaller. Insurance defense hiring fell 14.7%, from 299 to 255 moves, and partner hiring fell 30.2%, from 96 to 67. A firm adding a defense partner is competing with specialists for fewer candidates, and the top 10 partner hirers already took 61.2% of the partner moves.

Latham & Watkins heads debt capital markets and Latham & Watkins heads merger control: one firm at the top of two of the five lists. In debt capital markets the next names are Mayer Brown, Sidley Austin and Greenberg Traurig; in merger control, Kirkland & Ellis, Hogan Lovells Cadwalader and Covington & Burling. Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher heads secondaries and fund transactions, ahead of Ropes & Gray and Kirkland & Ellis, with the first four firms in the 6-10 band.

Each of these markets has a center. Merger control hiring gathers in Brussels, where European merger review sits: the city took 23.9% of merger control moves, an index of 2,783 against the market. London's index was 240 in debt capital markets and 292 in secondaries. Debt capital markets hiring held flat (-6.0%) and merger control held flat (-7.9%), while secondaries rose 40.4%, from 94 to 132 moves.

A firm below the global platforms that wants a lawyer in these fields bids against large deal flow and an international office network. The realistic opening is a lawyer who wants a bigger role than a top 10 platform will give, and the search should be pitched on that, in the city where the specialty is done.

In the Sartori & Partners lateral database the top 10 partner hirers took 69.0% of fund finance partner moves and 61.2% in insurance defense, against 25.1% in banking and finance and 13.5% across the market. In fund finance the partner figure sits 12.7 points above the all-level share, and in insurance defense 11.2 points above it. The pattern reaches beyond these fields: in transportation and trucking liability the top 10 partner hirers took 62.9% of partner moves, against 51.5% at all levels.

Secondaries is where partner demand moved most. Partner hiring in the specialty rose 74.3%, from 35 to 61, and partners made up 50.0% of its lateral moves, against 27.7% market-wide.

A partner search in fund finance or insurance defense runs against a handful of firms that take most partner moves, so expect the candidate to weigh a second offer from one of them. In secondaries partner hiring is growing fastest, which favors firms that move quickly.

First, name the rivals before the search starts, from the specialty list, not the market ranking: in fund finance that means Sidley Austin and Paul Hastings, in insurance defense Wilson Elser Moskowitz Edelman & Dicker, in debt capital markets and merger control Latham & Watkins. Second, recruit where the specialty is done: London and New York for fund finance, debt capital markets and secondaries, Brussels for merger control, with London at an index of 282 in fund finance.

Third, read the direction. Fund finance and secondaries are growing, so candidates have options and a slow process loses them; insurance defense hiring fell 14.7%, so the bench is thinner and the specialists already hold most of it. Fourth, price the time: where the top 10 take 69.0% of partner moves, as in fund finance, a partner hire is a contest with known firms, not a search of an open market. Sartori & Partners tracks these lists monthly, so a firm can see when a leader slows and the field opens.