Deal Types vs Lateral Hiring 2026: Corporate Hiring Outran M&A

Is M&A deal volume vs law firm hiring a fair guide for a lateral plan? Sartori & Partners data show M&A deals rose 8.9% year on year, with 9,226 dated deals in the latest settled 12 months against 8,475 a year before. Corporate and M&A lateral hiring rose 15.8% over the same windows. The hiring grew faster than the work it is usually assumed to follow. This report sets four deal types against the practice that handles most of each: M&A against corporate, regulatory and antitrust against antitrust and competition, capital markets against capital markets, and restructuring deals against restructuring lawyers. In none of the four did hiring move in step with the deal count: it ran faster, held flat or went the other way.

Start with the pairing that carries the most weight. Corporate and M&A lawyers appear on 90.2% of M&A deals, and the next practice on the list, funds and investment management, appears on 1.3%. The M&A count is, in practice, the corporate group's own workload. That workload rose 8.9%. Corporate lateral hiring rose 15.8%, with 2,933 moves in the settled window against 2,532. The hiring rate grew 1.8 times as fast as the deal count, and it also beat the whole lateral market, where moves rose 9.0%.

The partner tier ran ahead of the deal count as well. Corporate partner hiring rose 12.2%, 873 partners against 778. Large firms did most of the buying: those with 1,000+ lawyers hired 62.6% of corporate laterals, compared with 53.6% of all laterals. Among US cities, corporate hiring over-indexes most in Houston, at 136 against the market, and Boston, at 127; abroad, Munich scores 264.

For a firm adding corporate partners, the deal count understates the competition. More firms are bidding for corporate laterals than the growth in M&A work alone would explain, and the largest firms do most of that hiring. Expect partner searches to meet counter-offers, and look at Houston and Boston as well as New York and London. The ten firms that hired the most corporate partners are listed below.

The regulatory and antitrust deal type is small, and it shrank. Its count fell 19.2%, to 210 deals from 260. Antitrust and competition lateral hiring held flat (+7.7%), at 393 moves against 365, and antitrust partner hiring held flat (+10.1%). This pairing is looser than M&A's: antitrust lawyers appear on 44.4% of these deals and financial services regulatory lawyers on 24.2%. The shrinking count describes a mixed basket of work, only part of which belongs to the antitrust group.

Where antitrust laterals land is unusual. Brussels takes 10.8% of antitrust moves, an index of 1,258 against the market, and Washington, DC scores 223. Antitrust lawyers also change firms in teams more often: 4.4% joined as part of a group, against 1.5% across all practices.

A firm building an antitrust bench should not read the drop in regulatory deals as a softer hiring market. Competition for antitrust laterals held at last year's level, the practice ranks 19th among practices by lateral volume, and much of the pool sits in Brussels and Washington, DC, where a firm without an office will find it hard to recruit. A team hire is a realistic route here, and it needs months of preparation.

Capital markets is the largest deal type on record. Sartori & Partners data count 12,698 capital markets deals in the latest settled 12 months, against 11,541 a year earlier, a count that rose 10.0%. The practice doing the work is clear: capital markets lawyers appear on 98.5% of these deals. Hiring did not follow. Capital markets lateral hiring held flat (+6.7%), at 609 against 571, and partner hiring held flat (+1.1%), at 185 against 183.

The capital markets bench overlaps heavily with corporate. Of capital markets laterals, 56.7% also carry a corporate and M&A practice and 29.1% a banking and finance practice. The market is also tied to a few cities: New York holds 25.0% of capital markets moves, an index of 169, and Hong Kong scores 535.

For a firm that wants capital markets capacity, the deal record says the work is there and the hiring record says few lawyers are moving to meet it. Existing teams absorbed the extra volume. A partner search will draw on a pool that has not grown, so the practical routes are a corporate partner with capital markets experience, or growing the team from within.

Restructuring is the one pairing where deals and hiring moved in opposite directions. Deals classed as restructuring and insolvency fell 10.4%, to 526 from 587, and restructuring lawyers appear on 97.7% of them. In the Sartori & Partners lateral database, restructuring hiring rose 10.0% over the same windows, reaching 702 moves against 638. Partner hiring in the practice rose 21.1%.

The deal-type count is a narrower cut than the restructuring practice's own deal count. The practice count takes in every matter restructuring lawyers worked on, and deals typed as restructuring make up 72.6% of it; on that wider measure the count held flat (-5.5%). On either measure, the deal record gave no lift to hiring, and hiring grew anyway.

Partners carry this market. Of restructuring laterals, 41.5% were partners, the highest partner weight of the four practices here, against 29.9% in corporate and 31.5% in capital markets. Firms added restructuring partners into a falling deal count. A firm that waits for the deal record to turn before hiring will compete for partners after others have already placed them.

Two more pairings act as a check on the four above. Fund formation deals rose 23.0% and funds and investment management hiring rose 23.7%, a gap of only 0.7 points. Leveraged and acquisition finance deals rose 18.8%, and banking and finance hiring rose 14.1%. The cut matters here too: the funds practice's total deal count held flat (+2.8%), even as fund formation, its largest deal type, grew. So a deal type can track hiring where a practice-wide count does not.

The lesson for a hiring committee is about which number to watch. Where a deal type and its practice line up, as in fund formation and leveraged finance, the deal record is a fair early signal. Where they part, as in capital markets and restructuring, only the practice's own hiring trend shows how contested the lateral market is.

Treat the deal count as context, never as the hiring forecast. In corporate, hiring rose 15.8% on M&A growth that was slower, so plan partner searches for competing offers and widen them to Houston and Boston. In antitrust, the fall in regulatory deals did not loosen anything: hiring held flat (+7.7%), and the candidates are concentrated in Brussels and Washington, DC, often moving as teams. In capital markets, deals grew and movers did not, so build from within or recruit corporate partners who already do the work. In restructuring, hire now: partner hiring rose 21.1% while the typed deal count fell, and the partners who are willing to move are being placed by other firms.