Partner vs Associate Lateral Moves: Partners Gain Share Since 2022

Sartori & Partners data show associates made 58.5% of lateral moves between law firms in the 12 months to October 2026: 8,240 of 14,091 moves. Partners made 3,904, or 27.7%. That split is the quick answer to the question of partner vs associate lateral moves, but it hides the finding that matters more to a firm planning its hiring. Over four calendar years the partner share has drifted up, while over the latest 12 months partner moves grew at almost exactly the same pace as the market as a whole. The change is a slow shift in who moves, not a sudden partner rush.

In the Sartori & Partners lateral database, 2.1 associates changed firms for every partner over the past 12 months. Counsel make up most of the remainder and are covered in a separate report. The associate count, 8,240, is the deep pool of the lateral market: in any given month most of the lawyers in motion are associates, and an associate search usually starts from a wide field of candidates at comparable seniority.

The partner pool is far narrower. Its 3,904 moves are spread across the market's 1,291 hiring firms, so most firms see only a handful of partner arrivals in a year. For a hiring partner, the gap in pool size sets the pace of a search more than any other factor: an associate mandate is mainly a question of screening, a partner mandate is a question of finding the few people whose practice fits and who are open to a move this year.

Partner moves rose 8.4% year on year, from 3,558 to 3,858 in the settled 12-month windows. All lateral moves rose 9.0% over the same windows, from 13,128 to 14,305. Both windows end in September rather than October, because new start dates are confirmed with a delay and the newest month always reads low.

The two rates are close, and the partner share of the settled window, 27.0%, is almost unchanged from 27.1% a year earlier. Read alone, the latest year does not show partners taking a larger slice of the market: every title moved more, in roughly the same proportion. A firm that set this year's partner hiring budget on last year's volumes should expect a similar mix of candidates, with somewhat more activity at every title, and no sign that partner competition has jumped in the last few quarters.

The shift shows over four calendar years. Sartori & Partners data show partners made 24.3% of lateral moves in 2022, 3,063 of 12,622. By 2025 that share had climbed to 27.2%, with 3,594 partner moves out of 13,237. Across those years total moves grew by 615 and partner moves by 531, so most of the extra volume came at partner level.

The path was not a straight line. In 2023 total moves dipped to 10,875 while partner moves stayed near 3,020, so partners made 27.8% of the market that year, a higher share than in 2025. In 2024 both counts recovered, with partners at 25.7%. So far in 2026, through October, partners make 28.2% of moves; the year is incomplete, but the mix sits in line with the past 12 months. The pattern suggests partner mobility held up when associate hiring slowed, and kept rising when it came back.

One caution on reading the older years. They miss lawyers who have since left private practice, which lifts recent counts by a few points. Associates make up most of the lawyers who leave firms for in-house roles, so that gap shrinks the older associate counts more than the older partner counts. If anything, it flatters the 2022 partner share and understates the drift. For a firm, the practical point is competition: a partner search today meets more rival partner searches than it did in 2022, inside a total market that has grown much less.

Partner moves do not split by practice the way the whole market does. Private equity is involved in 12.2% of partner moves against 8.8% of all moves. Restructuring and insolvency shows 7.4% against 5.0%, and tax 6.9% against 5.0%.

Employment and labor work runs the other way: it is involved in 8.7% of partner moves against 10.7% overall, which means associates carry more of its lateral traffic. Litigation sits close to its share of the whole market. These shares overlap, since one move can involve several practices, so they compare within a row rather than add up to a whole. A firm building a private equity or restructuring bench is hiring where partners are a larger part of the moving pool and a lateral partner is a realistic route; in employment work, growing from associates is the more natural path.

The associate side of the market has a second door. Sartori & Partners data show associates made 76.7% of moves from law firms to in-house roles between May and October 2026, against 58.5% of lateral moves between firms. Partners made only 11.0% of in-house moves, against 27.7% of lateral moves. The in-house figures cover six months and the lateral ones 12 months, so this compares mix, not volume.

The scale is still modest: moves to in-house roles equaled 13.1% of lateral moves over the same six months, and lateral moves were 86.1% of all exits from firms in the same period. Demand inside firms points the same way: job postings on law-firm websites typically ask for between 3 and 6 years of experience, which is mid-level associate territory. Firms compete for those associates with in-house employers as well as with each other, so associate retention stays a live issue even while partner moves draw most of the attention.

Plan partner hiring against a rising slice of the market. Partners were 27.2% of moves in 2025 against 24.3% in 2022, and a firm that sets timelines and offer terms on its 2022 experience will underestimate how many other firms are speaking to the same candidates.

Do not read the latest year as acceleration. Partner moves rose 8.4%, close to the market's 9.0%, so there is no reason to rush a partner search ahead of an expected surge. The case for acting now is the four-year drift, not the last 12 months.

Expect more concentration at the top of partner hiring. The top 10 partner hirers took 13.5% of partner moves, against 12.9% for the top 10 hirers at all titles. A firm outside that group is often bidding against one of them for the same partner, and should know which ones are active in its practices before it opens a conversation.

Treat the associate pool as wide but leaky. It is 2.1 times the size of the partner pool, yet associates are also most of the lawyers leaving firms for in-house roles. Retention of mid-level associates protects the bench from which future partners are promoted, and that matters more as lateral partner hiring takes a larger share of the market.