Leverage for Consumer and Retail Buyers: One Firm Leads a Level Field

General counsel comparing law firms for retail companies are shopping in a market with no owner. Sartori & Partners data show 1,472 deals for consumer goods and retail clients in the 12 months to October 2026, and consumer and retail clients were involved in 3.1% of all dated deals. One firm, Latham & Watkins, sits in the 61-100 band of deals advised. Below it the table flattens at once: Harter Secrest & Emery holds second place in the 41-60 band, and the eight firms after it all sit in the 21-40 band. Disputes, not financings, are the largest type of work, and restructuring turns up far more often than in the market as a whole. For a company that buys legal work, a field this flat is room to negotiate, and room to look beyond the firms that head the market's deal table.

Firms are published here as bands of deals advised, not as counts. In consumer goods and retail, Latham & Watkins is alone in the 61-100 band. Harter Secrest & Emery follows one band lower, in the 41-60 band, and does not appear in the market's top 10 at all. From third to tenth place every firm sits in the same 21-40 band, so the order among those eight says little that a buyer should rely on. Even the most active adviser worked on 61-100 of the sector's 1,472 deals.

No firm has the sector volume to set terms on its own, and the sector's advisers are not simply the market's busiest firms. Set the consumer and retail top 10 beside the market's top 10 deal advisers and four names sit on both lists: Latham & Watkins, Kirkland & Ellis, Davis Polk & Wardwell and Sidley Austin. The firm at second place in this sector is not among them. A company can run a genuine competition for a mandate among the firms in the 21-40 band, and sector experience is not reserved for the firms that head the market's deal table.

Pharma and biotech shows what a held sector looks like. There, Cooley and Goodwin Procter both sit in the 251-400 band, and the firm at tenth place, Covington & Burling, sits in the 61-100 band: the same band as the single most active firm in consumer and retail. Pharma and biotech has more work, 3,276 deals against 1,472, and its firm table is far steeper. Its top 10 steps down through four bands with real distance between them; consumer and retail drops from one firm to a field.

The nearest sectors look more like consumer and retail than like pharma. Media and entertainment also has one firm, Latham & Watkins, in the 61-100 band, with the rest at 21-40 and lower. In food, beverage and agriculture even the first firm sits in the 41-60 band. Where advisers are concentrated, the busiest firms act for many of a company's competitors and conflicts narrow the choice. Where they are spread, as here, conflicts bite less often and a company can keep two or three firms in active competition for the same kind of work.

Disputes and investigations account for 42.4% of consumer and retail deals, against 25.0% across the market, where capital markets is the largest type at 25.7%. In consumer and retail, capital markets falls back to 20.4% and M&A sits at 19.9%, close to the market's 19.3%. The sector recorded 624 disputes against 300 capital markets deals, a ratio of 2.1 to one. Some deals carry no type, so these shares compare with each other rather than describe all of the work.

The practice mix shows who handles those disputes. Intellectual property lawyers appear on 31.9% of consumer and retail deals, against 11.1% in the market, while litigation and disputes as a named practice appears on only 1.6%. Across all sectors, Sartori & Partners data credit 5,103 disputes to intellectual property lawyers and 1,753 to litigation lawyers. Product liability is the other practice that runs high in this sector, at 5.0% of deals against 2.1% market-wide.

The lateral market points the same way. Of the 123 lawyers with a consumer and retail focus who changed firms in the past 12 months, product liability lawyers make up 20.3%, an index of 298 against their share of all lateral moves; a lawyer can carry more than one practice. For a consumer brand, the disputes partner who matters most is usually an intellectual property or product liability litigator, and the panel should be chosen around that bench rather than around a general litigation department.

Restructuring and insolvency is a small share of the sector's work, 3.1% of consumer and retail deals, but that is well above the market's 1.1%. Restructuring lawyers appear on 4.1% of the sector's deals, against 1.5% across all sectors. Banking and lending, the financing that often sits behind a distressed retailer, is 3.0% of consumer and retail deals, against 3.3% in the market.

Distress work needs a firm with no conflict against lenders, landlords and suppliers. Many of the firms with sector volume may already act for creditors, so a retailer or consumer brand should clear its restructuring counsel for conflicts before trading weakens, not after.

Consumer and retail deals were flat year on year in the settled 12-month windows: 1,474 against 1,505, a change of -2.1%. The whole deal market rose 10.6% over the same windows, and pharma and biotech rose 14.5%. Food, beverage and agriculture was also flat at -1.5%, and media and entertainment stayed flat at +4.2%.

The work is also spread across many buyers. In the Sartori & Partners deal record, the sector's 1,472 deals came from 646 distinct clients, or 2.3 deals per client, close to pharma and biotech at 2.4 and above media and entertainment at 1.8. A flat sector with many clients and no dominant adviser favors the buyer: firms that want consumer and retail volume have to win it one client at a time.

Run competitions. With one firm in the 61-100 band and the next nine in the two bands under it, no adviser can claim to be the only firm with sector volume. Ask two or three firms from the 21-40 band to pitch for each significant mandate, and read Harter Secrest & Emery at second place, a firm outside the market's top 10, as a sign that sector experience does not require the market's largest deal practice. A firm with sector volume that sits outside the market's top 10 can be asked to carry repeat matters at lower rates, while the firms that head the market's table are kept for the largest deals.

Build the panel around disputes. With disputes at 42.4% of the sector's deals and intellectual property lawyers on 31.9%, the intellectual property litigation relationship is the one a consumer company will use most often. Price it as repeat work, with fixed fees for brand enforcement and portfolio matters, and keep a separate restructuring firm cleared for conflicts, since that work appears on 3.1% of the sector's deals, well above the market's 1.1%.

Use the timing. Sector deal flow was flat at -2.1% while pharma and biotech rose 14.5%, so consumer and retail teams are not stretched by rising volume. Rates, staffing commitments and secondments are open to negotiation now in a way they may not be in a sector where the same firms are at capacity.