Team Moves Are 1.5% of Law Firm Laterals, and They Cluster

Lateral group moves law firms make draw attention out of proportion to their number. Sartori & Partners data show that 1.5% of lateral moves were part of a team joining the same firm in the same quarter. Everything else is individual hiring: one partner, one counsel, one associate at a time. For a firm planning growth, that is the base rate. A team is the exception, and the exceptions are not spread evenly. They sit in a small group of practices where the work travels with a group rather than with a single name.

Set against other features of the same market, the team share is small. In the Sartori & Partners lateral database, 20.5% of lateral moves also involved a change of city and 12.9% came with a step up in title. Team moves, at 1.5%, are rarer than either. The market itself is busy: lateral moves rose 9.0% on the settled 12-month windows, from 13,128 to 14,305. Almost all of that volume is individual hiring.

For a hiring committee, the reading is simple. A team lift is a rare event with its own timetable, not a routine way to add capacity. A growth plan that depends on a group arriving together rests on an outcome the market seldom produces, so it needs a fallback built on individual partners.

Team moves concentrate in a few practices. In international arbitration and public international law, 7.4% of lateral moves were team moves, 4.9 times the market share. Technology, data and privacy follows at 5.4%, or 3.6 times the market. Intellectual property sits at 5.1%, 3.4 times the market.

Antitrust and competition is the nearest practice outside that group, at 4.4%, only 0.7 points below intellectual property. Corporate and M&A, the 2nd-largest practice by lateral volume, sits at 0.2%. Here volume and team share pull apart: the big transactional practices move people one by one.

The pattern fits how the work is organized. Arbitration teams form around a few long cases and a tribunal calendar, and a partner who leaves mid-case usually brings the associates who know the record. Patent and technology disputes run on similar case teams, and the two practices overlap: 27.4% of technology and data moves also involved intellectual property. Deal teams, by contrast, recombine on each transaction, so corporate lawyers rarely have a fixed group to bring.

Arbitration is also a small practice: 162 lateral moves in the latest 12 months, against 2,910 in corporate and M&A. A handful of team moves lifts its share quickly, so read the arbitration figure as a strong tendency rather than a precise rate. If the brief is arbitration, IP or technology, ask early whether the partner can bring a team and put the cost of absorbing a group into the plan. In corporate and M&A, a team pitch is unusual enough to deserve extra diligence.

Team-prone practices are partner-heavy. Partners made 34.4% of lateral moves in intellectual property, 33.2% in technology and data and 35.8% in arbitration, against 27.7% across the market. A partner with a following is the person most likely to arrive with colleagues.

Arbitration moves lean to the largest platforms: 71.4% went to firms of 1,000+ lawyers, against 53.6% in the market. Hiring is concentrated as well. The top 10 arbitration hirers took 40.3% of the practice's lateral moves, against 12.9% for the top 10 hirers market-wide. Geography narrows it further: London drew 28.4% of arbitration moves, an index of 307 against the market.

A firm bidding for an arbitration team is competing with a short list of large firms, many with a London platform. A mid-sized firm needs a clear case for why the group's cases are better served on its platform, and a partner sponsor who can make that case in the first meeting.

Public announcements give a second view, measured in a different way. Sartori & Partners counted 32 announced team lifts since 2022, with a median team of 16 people. This is a count of events, not a share of moves, and it is not meant to be read against the percentages above. Team sizes are published in bands of people.

The busiest quarter in the record was the second quarter of 2025, with 6 announced lifts. That quarter also moved the most people, in the 61-100 band; the first quarter of 2026 reached the same 61-100 band with fewer lifts. With a median of 16, the typical announced group needs its own office space, conflicts review and pay plan before it arrives. Firms that want such a hire should run conflicts and space planning alongside the partner talks, not after them.

The latest announcements show who builds through groups. In the fourth quarter of 2026, Choate Hall & Stewart took a team in the 11-20 band from Kasowitz Benson Torres. In the third quarter, King & Spalding added a group in the 11-20 band from WilmerHale; it also ranks 8th among arbitration hirers for the latest 12 months. Brown Rudnick added a group from Herbert Smith Freehills Kramer in that quarter.

In the second quarter of 2026, Kirkland & Ellis took a group in the 6-10 band from Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton. It also ranks 2nd among antitrust hirers. In the first quarter, Barnes & Thornburg took a group in the 21-40 band from Ballard Spahr. Some of the firms that build through groups in these practices are also among the most active individual hirers there. A firm that wants a team in arbitration, IP or antitrust is competing with them for the same people, so its approach needs a platform story and a fast decision path.

Set the base rate first. At 1.5% of lateral moves, a team is the exception, so budget growth around individual partners and treat a group as upside. Then match the method to the practice. In arbitration, technology and data, and intellectual property, team moves run at 7.4%, 5.4% and 5.1%: ask every candidate partner early who would follow, and plan conflicts, space and pay for the group from the start. In corporate and M&A, at 0.2%, test a group pitch hard and check that the work is portable before building a plan around it.

Expect large-firm competition for the groups that do move: in arbitration, 71.4% of lateral moves went to firms of 1,000+ lawyers. Size the integration before the announcement, too. The median announced team of 16 people needs a sponsor, a billing plan and an office decision agreed in advance.