Law Firms Promoted 0.79 Partners per Lateral Partner Hired

Every managing partner who has to decide whether to promote vs hire lateral partners is choosing against a market that already leans one way. Sartori & Partners data show that law firms promoted 0.79 lawyers to partner for every lateral partner they hired over 12 months. Firms made 2,955 partners from their own ranks and bought 3,749 from other firms. The balance is not even across the market: employment made 0.95 promotions per lateral partner hire, restructuring 0.47.

Promotion figures run to May 2026, the last complete month, so the 12 months measured here run from June 2025 to May 2026, and lateral partner hires are counted over the same months. Turned the other way, those two counts give 1.3 lateral partner hires for each promotion to partner. Hiring from outside is not a top-up to the promotion round: it is the larger of the two routes to the partnership.

The lateral route is still widening. Comparing the two settled 12-month windows of lateral data, partner hiring rose 8.4%, from 3,558 to 3,858. A firm that plans its partner pipeline only around internal candidates is planning against competitors who keep adding partners from outside, and whose search lists include the partners it most wants to keep.

The last complete calendar year confirms the 12-month figure. In 2025 firms promoted 2,859 lawyers to partner and hired 3,594 lateral partners, or 0.8 promotions per lateral hire, against 0.79 in the most recent 12 months.

Earlier full years land in the same range: 0.8 in 2024, 0.9 in 2023 and 0.9 in 2022. Read these as a range rather than a trend, since older years of lateral records miss lawyers who have since left private practice, which lifts recent years by a few points.

The point that holds in every complete year is simple: the ratio stays below one. Across the market, firms add more partners by hiring than by promotion, and a partner seat that opens is regularly filled from another firm rather than from the associate class below it.

Restructuring and insolvency sits furthest from the market. In the Sartori & Partners lateral database, restructuring recorded 133 promotions to partner over the same 12 months, and 0.47 promotions per lateral partner hire, the lowest ratio of any practice we track.

Finance practices follow the same pattern, if less sharply. Banking and finance promoted 0.57 partners per lateral partner hire, funds and investment management 0.58 and tax 0.58. Projects and infrastructure stood at 0.54, health care at 0.52 and private equity at 0.68, all below the market's 0.79.

Restructuring work runs in cycles, and a firm that waits for its own associates to mature into restructuring partners can miss the cycle that created the need. Most firms buy instead. For a firm entering or rebuilding this practice, that means a search against many other bidders for the same short list of names, on a timetable set by the market rather than by the firm's own promotion round.

At the other end, employment and labor promoted 305 lawyers to partner and made 0.95 promotions per lateral partner hire. That is the highest ratio among the eighteen practices in the table below, all of which still hired more partners than they promoted.

Litigation, the largest practice by promotions with 1,221, sat at 0.80, in line with the market. Insurance and reinsurance reached 0.82 and capital markets 0.75. Corporate and M&A sat a little below the market at 0.75, on 620 promotions.

Only small practices promoted as many partners as they hired: commercial contracts at 1.18 and immigration at 1.00, each on small numbers of promotions. In employment, a lateral partner hire competes with internal candidates who are close to the line, and the firm needs to explain to its senior associates how the seat fits their path.

Kirkland & Ellis heads both lists below, in the 61-100 band for partners promoted and the 61-100 band for partners hired. DLA Piper, Dentons and Simpson Thacher & Bartlett also appear on both. The other firms in the promotion top 10 sit in the 21-40 band, and most of them do not rank among the busiest lateral buyers.

Buying is not one or two firms' habit. The ten most active hirers took 13.5% of lateral partner hires, so most lateral partner demand sits outside the busiest names. Each list covers its own latest 12 months. A firm that benchmarks its own mix should look at peers of its size and practice weight, not at the firms at the head of either list.

Plan on the market's balance of 0.79 promotions per lateral partner hire, which matches the 2025 ratio of 0.8. A partner class built only from promotions will fall behind peers that buy as well.

In restructuring, at 0.47, and in banking, funds and tax, plan partner growth as a lateral search, start it before the need is urgent, and expect competing offers. In employment, at 0.95, the associate bench can carry more of the load; a lateral hire there should fill a gap the bench cannot, such as a client relationship or a regulatory specialty. Litigation and corporate, near the market figure, call for both: promote the core, buy the specialists. Sartori & Partners tracks these ratios each month, so a firm can test its own partner class against its practice rather than against the market as a whole.