The Top 10 Lateral Hirers Take 12.9% of Moves, 34.0% in Funds

Ask which law firms hire the most laterals and the answer is a list of ten familiar names, but that list explains less of the market than its reputation suggests. Sartori & Partners data show that the top 10 hiring firms took 12.9% of the 14,091 lateral moves recorded in the 12 months to October 2026. Everything else went to a long tail: 1,291 firms hired at least one lateral lawyer in the period. The figures draw on public law-firm announcements, firm websites and professional profiles, checked monthly. For a firm leader planning the next partner or associate hire, the useful question is not who hires most in total. It is how crowded the field is in the practice being hired for, and that varies a great deal.

The firm ranked first sits in the 251-400 band of lateral hires for the 12 months. The next five firms all fall in the 151-250 band, and the firms ranked 7th to 10th in the 101-150 band. Those are heavy intakes for single firms, yet together they come to 12.9% of the market. Across all 1,291 hiring firms the average was 10.9 lateral hires per firm, a small fraction of what any firm on the list below took in.

Firm size explains only part of the pattern. Firms of 1,000+ lawyers took 53.6% of all lateral moves, so most volume does go to large platforms. It is shared among many of them, though, not held by ten. Firms of 400-999 lawyers took another 23.4%, and firms under 150 lawyers 9.7%.

For a firm competing for an associate or counsel hire, the rival offer is far more likely to come from a firm outside this list than from a name on it. Benchmarking pay and terms against the top 10 alone misses most of the market a candidate is actually weighing.

At partner level, the top 10 partner hirers took 13.5% of the 3,904 lateral partner moves, 0.6 points above the share for all levels. The partner list is also flat at the top: the first three firms sit in the 61-100 band of partner hires, the firms ranked 4th to 8th in the 41-60 band, and the firms ranked 9th and 10th in the 21-40 band. Eight of the ten firms on the partner list also appear on the list for all levels; the other two reach the partner top 10 without making the overall top 10.

A partner with a portable practice therefore has many plausible buyers. In the Sartori & Partners lateral database, no group of firms dominates partner intake, so a firm outside the top 10 is not bidding against a closed club. It is bidding against the particular firms active in that practice and that city, and those are the competitors worth mapping before the first meeting.

The market figure averages over practices that behave very differently. Litigation and disputes, the largest practice by volume with 5,629 lateral moves, saw the top 10 hirers take 12.0%, a little under the market's 12.9%. In funds and investment management, with 594 moves, the top 10 took 34.0%, which is 2.8 times the litigation share.

The number of buyers accounts for the gap. Sartori & Partners counted 928 firms that hired a litigation lateral, 71.9% of every firm that made a lateral hire of any kind. Funds laterals joined only 159 firms, or 12.3% of the hiring firms. Litigation is practiced at firms of every size, from insurance defense and employment specialists to the trial groups of the largest firms. Fund formation and investment management work sits mostly inside large corporate platforms.

Firms of 1,000+ lawyers took 75.8% of funds moves, against 43.3% of litigation moves. At the other end, firms under 150 lawyers took 12.8% of litigation hires and 3.9% of funds hires. At partner level the gap narrows but holds: the top 10 partner hirers took 13.9% of litigation partner moves and 28.9% in funds. For a firm building a funds bench, competing offers will come from a short, predictable set of large firms. For a litigation hire the field is wide and the competition is mostly local.

Private equity sits between the two, much nearer funds than litigation. The top 10 hirers took 27.0% of the 1,247 private equity lateral moves and 28.0% of its partner moves, against 13.5% for partners across the market. Only 280 firms made a private equity lateral hire. Firms of 1,000+ lawyers took 71.6% of these moves, 18.0 points more than their share of the whole market.

The top of the private equity list is evenly matched: the first three firms sit in the 41-60 band, and the rest of the top 10 in the 21-40 band. The buyers also overlap with funds: 26.6% of funds moves involved private equity work as well. A firm adding sponsor-side partners should expect the same large platforms on the other side of most contested offers, and should price the hire against them rather than against the market average.

Concentration bites harder when demand rises. On the settled 12-month windows, funds and investment management moves rose 23.7%, from 507 to 627. Private equity moves rose 14.9%, from 1,092 to 1,255. Litigation grew more slowly, rising 7.5% from 5,281 to 5,679, against a market rise of 9.0%.

Partner moves show the same split. Funds partner moves rose 29.7%, from 165 to 214. Litigation partner moves held flat (+0.9%), from 1,492 to 1,505. A practice with rising demand and a short list of buyers is where firms should expect the stiffest contest for the same candidates, and where a second candidate kept warm is worth the effort.

Read the field for the practice, not for the market. A top 10 share of 12.9% says little about a funds search, where the top 10 take 34.0%, or a private equity search, where they take 27.0%. Before a search in those practices opens, list the firms in that practice's own top 10: they are the likely counter-bidders, and their pay and partnership terms are the ones a candidate will compare.

In litigation, with 928 firms hiring, the rival offer is as likely to come from a firm of 400-999 lawyers or 150-399 lawyers as from the largest platforms: those two size groups took 25.7% and 18.2% of litigation moves. Speed and a clear role matter more there than matching a single dominant bidder.

At partner level, a firm outside the top 10 is not shut out of the market. The top 10 partner hirers took 13.5% of partner moves, and the large majority went to firms outside that list. A focused firm that knows which partners fit its platform can compete on equal terms with names that hire in far greater numbers.