Law Firm Job Postings vs Lateral Hires: The West Posts, London Hires

Law firm job postings are the most visible sign of hiring demand and one of the least complete. Sartori & Partners data show 16,920 open roles live on law-firm career pages on one day in November 2026, held by 218 firms. Over the 12 months to October, 1,291 firms made at least one lateral hire and the market recorded 14,091 lateral moves. Read together, the two counts draw different maps of where firms compete for lawyers, and the differences are large enough to change how a search is planned.

The first gap is in who is hiring. In the Sartori & Partners lateral database, 1,291 firms hired at least one lawyer from another firm in 12 months, against 218 firms with an opening live on the data date. The firms that advertise carry many openings each: 77.6 on average, against 10.9 lateral hires per hiring firm across a full year.

The two figures measure different things. Open roles are a stock: an opening counts for as long as it stays on the career page, whatever the role, and leaves the count when the firm takes it off. Lateral hires are a flow: lawyers who changed firm and started work inside the window. Neither is a forecast of the other. Set side by side, they separate where firms say they are hiring from where lawyers actually land.

For a firm leader, rival career pages show the intentions of a small set of large advertisers. Much of the competition for the same associates and partners comes from firms outside that group, and it becomes visible only in the moves they complete.

By city the maps part sharply. San Diego shows 235 open roles against 126 lateral hires in 12 months, or 1.9 openings per hire. Seattle, with 215 openings against 156 hires, and Denver, with 213 against 167, also sit above one opening per hire. So do San Francisco, at 516 against 453, and Boston, at 388 against 365. Austin, with 158 openings against 106 hires, belongs in the same group.

The pattern is not only American. Manchester lists 188 open roles against 116 lateral moves, and Bristol 160 against 74. Sydney, with 148 openings against 109 hires, follows the same shape. What these cities share is a large stock of advertised roles set against a modest number of lawyers who actually change firm there each year.

In these markets an advertised opening competes with many other advertised openings for a thin pool of movers. Expect searches to run longer, expect candidates to hold more than one offer, and treat a posted role as a starting point rather than the main channel.

The two largest lateral markets show the opposite gap. New York recorded 2,083 lateral hires in 12 months against 989 open roles on the data date, or 2.1 hires per opening. London's gap is wider still: 1,302 hires against 411 openings, which is 3.2 hires for each advertised role.

London's volume is not a surge that postings have yet to catch. Lateral hiring in the city held flat (-2.5%), with 1,353 moves in the latest settled 12 months against 1,387 a year earlier. The city also draws lawyers in from elsewhere: 153 moved to London from another city in 12 months, against 128 who left it for one. Its hires are concentrated in the largest firms, with 68.5% joining firms of 1,000+ lawyers, against 53.6% across the market.

For a firm building in New York or London, career pages understate demand by a wide margin. The competition there is visible in the moves rival firms complete, and a quiet set of postings is no sign that a bench is easy to hire into.

San Francisco is the city where open roles look most like real pressure. Lateral hiring there rose 30.1%, from 355 moves to 462 across two settled 12-month windows, while the whole market rose 9.0%. Even after that rise, the city's 516 open roles exceed the 453 lateral hires of the last 12 months.

The supply side is tight. Sartori & Partners data show 71 lawyers left San Francisco for another city in 12 months, against 57 who arrived. Over 3 years, 68.6% of the city's lateral hires came from firms already in San Francisco. Intellectual property carries an index of 292 against its share of the whole market, the highest in the city's practice list.

A firm that needs a San Francisco hire is recruiting from its direct local rivals. Plan for candidates who are already being approached, and consider relocation candidates early, because the city sends out more movers than it receives.

The experience firms ask for narrows the picture further. The median opening asks for 3.0 years at the low end and 6.0 years at the high end. Associates made up 58.5% of lateral hires in 12 months, so the postings do speak to the largest group of movers. Partners made up 27.7%, or 3,904 moves, and an experience range of that kind does not describe them.

By practice, the largest counts of open roles are in Litigation & Disputes with 1,233, Product Liability & Torts with 1,202 and Corporate & M&A with 1,147. Product liability sits close to litigation in openings, although it drew 960 lateral moves against 5,629 for litigation. The full practice comparison is in our companion report on open roles and lateral hires by practice.

Use the posted experience range as a read on associate competition in a given city. For partner hires, postings say almost nothing, and the useful signal is the record of partner moves.

First, treat rival career pages as the voice of 218 advertisers, not of the 1,291 firms that actually hired laterally. Second, where openings exceed a year of hires, as in San Diego, Seattle, Denver, Austin, San Francisco and Boston, start searches before the need is urgent, prepare for counteroffers, and look beyond the city: San Francisco alone sent 71 lawyers elsewhere in 12 months. Third, in New York and London, a thin set of postings hides heavy demand, with 2.1 and 3.2 hires per opening. Finally, for partners, judge the market by moves: postings that ask for 6.0 years at most are aimed at associates.