Food and Agriculture Companies Buy Litigation First: IP Leads

General counsel who shortlist law firms for food and beverage companies tend to start from deal credentials. The work itself points somewhere else. Sartori & Partners data show 1,178 food, beverage and agriculture deals in the 12 months to October 2026, and disputes and investigations were the largest type, at 38.7% of them against 25.0% across all sectors. Intellectual property lawyers were credited on 29.5% of the sector's deals, more than any other practice. A panel for this sector should start with trial and IP counsel and add deal firms second.

Each matter in the Sartori & Partners records carries a deal type, and a lawsuit or a government investigation counts as a deal just as a sale or a bond issue does. For food, beverage and agriculture companies, disputes and investigations account for 38.7% of the sector's deals, 13.7 points above the share across all sectors. Capital markets work follows at 24.6%, close to the market's 25.7%. M&A sits at 22.3% against 19.3%, only slightly above the norm. Banking and lending is a small line, at 3.9% against 3.3%.

These shares are counted against every deal in the sector, including deals that carry no type, so the listed types are not the whole of the work and should not be added up. The order is what counts. In food and agriculture, disputes run at 1.7 times the M&A count, 456 matters against 263. Across the whole market the two sit much closer, at 12,054 disputes against 9,281 M&A deals. For a general counsel, that ratio is the budget: most outside spend in this sector goes to fighting and defending claims, and a panel weighted toward transactional firms leaves the larger line of work to whoever is free when a claim lands.

Practice credits tell the same story from the lawyers' side. Intellectual property lawyers appear on 29.5% of food, beverage and agriculture deals, against 11.1% of all deals, which puts IP ahead of capital markets at 25.5% and corporate and M&A at 25.3% in this sector. A deal can carry more than one practice, so these shares overlap.

The general litigation practice is thin by comparison. Litigation and disputes lawyers sit on 2.0% of the sector's deals, against 3.7% market-wide, and product liability and torts lawyers on 2.7% against 2.1%. That points to IP teams carrying much of the sector's disputes work: across the whole market, intellectual property is the practice most often credited on a disputes and investigations deal, present on 42.3% of them. Food and agriculture companies defend brands, packaging and patents on seeds and processes, and those fights land with IP partners. The practical step is to hire IP litigators who take cases to trial, not only IP counsel who handle filings, and to ask each candidate firm how many of its IP partners have run a trial in the last 3 years.

The pattern is shared with the consumer side of the economy, not with industry. Consumer goods and retail companies show disputes and investigations at 42.4% of their deals and intellectual property on 31.9%, a mix close to food's. Media and entertainment carries disputes at 39.8%, with M&A heavier at 28.0%. Industrial manufacturers sit at the other end: M&A is 40.0% of their deals, disputes only 11.1%, and intellectual property lawyers appear on 4.8%.

In what they buy from law firms, food companies look more like brand owners than plant owners, even though many of them run factories, farms and long supply chains. Sartori & Partners figures put the sector's IP share at 6.1 times the manufacturing figure. For a general counsel benchmarking panel design and rates, the useful peer group is consumer goods and retail, not industrial manufacturing.

Over the settled 12-month windows, the sector recorded 1,155 deals against 1,172 a year earlier, so the count held flat (-1.5%). Deals across all sectors rose 10.6% over the same months, from 43,590 to 48,216. The neighbors were quiet as well. Consumer goods and retail held flat (-2.1%), media and entertainment held flat (+4.2%), and industrial manufacturing held flat (+3.2%). The market's growth came from other sectors, so food companies are not competing with a surge in their own sector for the same partners' time.

Deal value is disclosed on 14.4% of the sector's deals, with a median of 498.5 million dollars where it is, against 540 million for consumer goods and 750 million for industrial manufacturing. Smaller disclosed tickets and a heavy share of fights mean fee discipline matters more here than access to the largest transactional names. A flat sector also gives the buyer room: firms whose food work is not growing tend to negotiate more readily on rates and staffing.

The Sartori & Partners ranking of firms by food, beverage and agriculture deals is close at the top. Davis Polk & Wardwell heads it in the 41-60 band, and every other firm in the top 10 sits in the 21-40 band, across 1,178 deals for 594 distinct clients.

Four of the ten, Davis Polk & Wardwell, Latham & Watkins, Jones Day and Clifford Chance, also rank in the top 10 for all deals across the market. A ranking by deal count rewards firms with large capital markets and M&A teams, because each offering or sale is one credit, and a long trademark or patent case is also only one credit. Trial and IP firms that carry the sector's larger line of work can be spread across many names without any of them reaching the top of a count. Use this list to choose deal counsel; build the litigation side of the panel on trial record, not on deal count.

Where the work is done tells a general counsel where the panel needs partners. Sartori & Partners data show that 30.5% of the sector's deals were handled with lawyers in New York, close to the consumer goods figure of 29.9% and well below media and entertainment at 43.4%. The base is the deals where the location of the lawyers is known, and one deal staffed from several cities counts in each of them, so the city shares overlap and add to more than the whole.

Washington, DC is the second city of the food work. Lawyers there worked on 15.1% of food and agriculture deals, against 11.7% for consumer goods, and well ahead of London at 10.3%; for consumer goods the two cities sit close, at 11.7% and 11.4%. Federal appeals courts, the patent office and the food and farm regulators all sit in Washington, which fits a sector that buys IP and disputes work. London's share sits below the industrial manufacturing figure of 16.5%, and Chicago, at 8.7%, below consumer goods at 11.1%. A New York and Washington pair covers the core of the sector's outside work; local trial counsel in the states where plants and farms sit, and where juries hear product and labeling claims, is the layer a count of large-firm offices does not show.

Build the panel in the order the work arrives. First, an IP litigation firm with trial depth in trademark and patent cases, since IP lawyers sit on 29.5% of the sector's deals. Second, a disputes and investigations firm with regulatory reach in Washington, for the largest deal type at 38.7%. Third, one or two deal firms for M&A at 22.3% and capital markets at 24.6%, each a smaller line than disputes.

Specialist supply on the lawyer side is small, though it is moving. In the Sartori & Partners lateral records, 66 lawyers with a food and agriculture focus changed firms in the 12 months to October, 57.6% of them partners. Over the settled windows the count rose 43.2%, 63 against 44, so the few specialists there are change firms more often than a year ago. A company that wants food-specific trial experience should secure it in a panel agreement before a claim arrives, and check that the partner it relies on has not just moved.

Review the panel each year against the deal-type mix rather than last year's invoices. If disputes stay near 38.7% of the work and M&A near 22.3%, budget and relationship time should follow that split, and a flat sector is the right moment to ask for it.