Law Firm Team Moves Come in Bursts: 6 of 32 in One Quarter

Sartori & Partners data count 32 announced team moves between law firms since 2022, and 6 of them fell in a single quarter, the second of 2025. Anyone who reads law firm team moves 2026 as a steady stream will plan the wrong way. Groups arrive in clusters, and then the record goes quiet for months. The median team had 16 lawyers identified in the move, which makes each one a practice group rather than a pair of partners. For a firm that wants to add capability through a group, the timing and the size of these moves shape the plan as much as the names involved.

The second quarter of 2025 stands apart. Sartori & Partners records show 6 announced team moves in those three months, 18.8% of everything on record since 2022. No other quarter held more than 3. The quarters around it were quiet by comparison: 2 moves in the first quarter of 2025, 3 in the third and 1 in the fourth. The whole of 2025 held 12 announced moves, and that single spring quarter accounts for 6 of them.

The lesson for a hiring committee is about readiness. Team opportunities bunch up, so a firm that waits for an even flow will meet several groups in play at once and too little capacity to assess them. A firm with its conflicts process, office space and partner sponsor prepared in advance can act inside such a window instead of watching it close.

Outside the peak, the record shows a low and fairly even base. Every quarter from the second of 2024 to the fourth of 2026 holds at least one announced team move, and all of them except the spring 2025 peak hold between 1 and 3. Earlier years were patchier: the three years from 2022 to 2024 together hold 10 moves, and several of their quarters have none on record.

Counts this small do not make a trend. A single burst can lift a year's total, and a quiet quarter can follow a busy one with no change in the underlying market. The year 2026 holds 10 announced moves so far, against 12 for 2025, and its fourth quarter covers only the weeks up to the data date. The practical reading is a base of a few announced team moves a quarter across the market, with an occasional spike that no calendar predicts.

Size follows the same uneven shape. In the second quarter of 2025 the teams that changed firms held 61-100 identified lawyers between them. The first quarter of 2026 reached the same 61-100 band with only 3 moves, so fewer teams carried as many people. A quiet quarter such as the fourth of 2025 sits in the 11-20 band.

All of these bands count the lawyers Sartori & Partners identified in each move, from public law-firm announcements, firm websites and professional profiles, checked monthly. They can be lower than the size the firms themselves announced. The median of 16 identified lawyers is therefore a floor for planning, not a ceiling.

A group of that size arrives with associates, open matters and its own billing history, and the receiving firm has to absorb all of it in one step. Plan the integration for the median, and keep a second plan for a quarter in which arrivals add up to the 61-100 range, when several teams can land on the same conflicts staff and the same office at once.

Lateral hiring as a whole has its own rhythm, and team moves do not track it. In the Sartori & Partners lateral database, the first quarter of 2025 saw 3,867 lateral moves and the second 3,266. Overall hiring eased in the very quarter when announced team moves went from 2 to 6. The first quarter of 2026 ran the other way: 4,041 lateral moves, more than any other quarter since the start of 2025, against 3 team moves.

A different measure sets the scale. Over the latest 12 months, 1.5% of lateral moves were lawyers who joined one firm together with colleagues within a single quarter. That share is counted on lawyers in the lateral record, while the 32 events above are public announcements. The two cannot be added or divided into each other; read together, they say only that hiring in groups is a thin slice of a market built on individual hires.

So do not time a team approach to the January hiring season. A group moves when its matters, its partners' economics and its position at the current firm line up, and that window opens on the team's calendar rather than the market's.

One of the newest moves in the record, in the fourth quarter of 2026, took a team in the 11-20 band of identified lawyers from Wiley Rein to Tyka Law (source: https://www.businessinsurance.com/new-insurance-coverage-law-firm-forms-out-of-wiley-rein/). The source describes a new firm formed by the departing group, and another source in the table below describes a launch of the same kind. For some teams, the alternative to a lateral offer is a platform of their own.

Nearly every recent team sits in the 11-20 or 21-40 bands, in line with the median of 16. The recent rows also cluster by quarter, as the chart does. A firm courting a group should ask early whether the partners are weighing a launch of their own, because then the offer has to beat independence as well as rival firms.

Build readiness before the burst. With 6 of 32 announced team moves landing in one quarter, the firms that close a group are the ones that can clear conflicts, find space and name a sponsor in weeks. Keep a standing team-intake process rather than inventing one when a group calls.

Size the plan on identified lawyers and allow for more. Sartori & Partners puts the median team at 16 identified lawyers, and firm announcements can run higher, so set compensation, office and associate budgets with headroom. Judge your own team hiring against the event record, not against the 1.5% share of lateral moves made with colleagues: that share describes the whole market's lawyers and will understate how much a single team changes one firm.

Expect competition from the team itself. One of the newest moves in the record went to Tyka Law (source: https://www.businessinsurance.com/new-insurance-coverage-law-firm-forms-out-of-wiley-rein/), a firm formed by the group, so put the case for your platform in the first meeting, before the partners settle on building their own.