Chicago Banking & Finance: 29.0% of Laterals Changed City

Sartori & Partners data show that the chicago finance associate lateral market draws on other cities more than either its practice or its city does. Over the last 12 months, 29.0% of banking and finance lateral moves into Chicago also involved a change of city, counting the moves where both cities are known. Banking and finance across the market stood at 20.4%, and Chicago at all practices at 15.7%. The second feature is the level mix: associates accounted for 70.1% of Chicago finance moves, against 55.8% for the practice as a whole and 61.6% for the city. For a firm hiring here, the people in motion are more junior and more mobile than either the finance or the Chicago averages suggest.

In the Sartori & Partners lateral database, the relocation share for Chicago finance sits 8.6 points above the practice and 13.3 points above the city. A Chicago finance lateral was 1.8 times as likely to have changed city as a Chicago lateral in general. The longer view gives the same order with a smaller gap: over 3 years the share was 24.9% for Chicago finance, 21.0% for finance across the market and 17.9% for the city. So the 12-month figure is higher than the cell's own 3-year level, and that 3-year level already sat above both comparisons.

The city as a whole takes in more relocating lawyers than it sends out. Across all practices, Chicago received 78 lateral lawyers from other cities over 12 months and saw 59 leave for another city, counting only moves where both cities are known. That balance is a city figure, not a finance one, but it shows that out-of-town candidates do accept Chicago. For a finance search, a brief limited to lawyers already in the city misses a real part of the people who actually move: put a relocation track in the plan from day one.

Relocation is the minority route, not the main one. Of the 221 banking and finance lateral moves into Chicago over 3 years, 136 were lawyers who left a Chicago office, or 61.5%. The city a lawyer left is not always on record, so that share is a floor rather than an exact split. For Chicago at all practices the same measure is 67.6%, which means finance leans on the local bench less than the city's other practices do.

The practice as a whole is also mostly local: over 3 years, 21.0% of finance laterals across the market changed city, so most moves stay inside one city wherever they happen. Chicago finance is the exception in degree, not in kind. The first call list should still be the Chicago offices of the firms that hire and train finance associates, with a second list of lawyers in other cities who have a reason to come to Chicago.

The level mix sets this cell apart as much as the relocation share does. Associates were 70.1% of Chicago finance laterals over 12 months, 14.3 points above banking and finance across the market and 8.5 points above Chicago at all practices. Over 3 years the order holds: associates made 62.4% of Chicago finance moves, against 57.2% for the practice and 59.9% for the city.

Partners are the smaller share: 20.8% of Chicago finance moves, against 30.8% for the practice and 26.8% for the city. Partner counts in this cell are too small to publish, so that share is a rough size, not a basis for ranking or for a year-on-year reading. Fewer movers stepped to a higher title on the way, too: 6.5% of Chicago finance laterals joined at a higher title, against 13.1% across the practice and 8.4% in the city.

For a hiring partner this is a market of sideways associate moves. Candidates expect a like-for-like title, so an offer competes on the work, the team and the platform rather than on a promotion. A lateral partner search in Chicago finance starts from a thin base and should be scoped with that in mind.

Sartori & Partners figures put Chicago finance hiring flat on the settled 12-month windows: 84 moves and then 76, a change of -9.5% that sits inside the noise for counts this small. Banking and finance across the market rose 14.1%, from 1,766 to 2,015. Hiring in Chicago at all practices held flat (+9.7%), from 548 to 601. The cell moved with its city, and only the practice grew.

Chicago is slightly under-weight in finance by both measures. The cell holds 3.9% of finance lateral moves, an index of 92 against Chicago's share of all moves. Seen from the city, finance is 12.9% of Chicago moves, an index of 93 against finance's share of the whole market.

Yearly totals swing more than the 12-month windows: 33 moves in 2023, 91 in 2025 and 66 in 2026 to October. On counts this size a single year is a weak guide. The planning point is simple: the pool of finance movers in Chicago is about as large as a year ago, while finance hiring across the market grew.

Over 3 years, the top 10 hirers took 38.5% of the individual lateral hires in Chicago finance, against 19.9% for banking and finance across the market and 21.4% for Chicago at all practices. 72 firms hired at least one finance lateral in Chicago over 3 years, and 48 did so in the last 12 months. Part of the gap is scale: a market of 221 moves over 3 years spreads across fewer firms than a whole practice or a whole city, so the share says more about the firms that keep coming back to Chicago finance than about the weight of any one of them.

Firms of 1,000+ lawyers took 58.4% of Chicago finance moves, fewer than the 63.8% they took across the practice but more than the 51.2% they took in Chicago at all practices. Firms under 150 lawyers took 10.4% of the cell, against 6.3% for finance across the market.

A firm outside this group bids against a short list of repeat hirers for the same associates. With so much of the 3-year hiring in ten hands, a slow process loses candidates to firms that hire in this market again and again.

Recruit wide. With 29.0% of Chicago finance laterals changing city, against 20.4% for the practice and 15.7% for the city, a search confined to Chicago addresses only part of the people who move. Plan the relocation conversation, the timing and the support before the first interview, not after the offer.

Recruit at associate level first. Associates were 70.1% of the cell's moves, and only 6.5% of all movers in the cell stepped to a higher title, so a like-for-like associate hire is the deal this market makes most often. A partner hire in Chicago finance is a longer and narrower search: the partner share was 20.8%, below both the practice and the city.

Expect competition from repeat hirers. Over 3 years the top 10 hirers took 38.5% of individual hires in the cell, and 43 banking and finance openings sat on Chicago career pages on the data date. Firms that want a finance associate this year should move quickly on good candidates, keep the out-of-town list warm, and set the offer on the work and the team rather than on title.