Employment Lateral Hiring in 2026: A West Coast Market, Few Partners

The map of employment lawyers lateral moves does not look like the map of the legal market. Sartori & Partners data show 1,512 employment and labor lawyers joining a new law firm in the 12 months to October 2026, 10.7% of every lateral move we track. Los Angeles, not New York, is the largest destination, and the practice moves fewer partners than the market does. A firm that plans an employment hire with a New York playbook and a partner-first brief is shopping in the wrong city for the wrong level.

Los Angeles took 166 employment laterals, 11.0% of the practice, against 5.1% of all lateral moves. That is an index of 218, which means its share of employment hiring runs far above its share of the market. Seattle reads 217 on a smaller base of 37 moves, and San Francisco reads 159. California's employee-protective statutes and its volume of wage-and-hour and class claims keep demand for this work high on the coast, and the hiring follows the work.

The financial centers run the other way. New York is still the second destination with 151 moves, but its 10.0% share of employment hiring sits well below its 14.8% share of the market: an index of 68. London reads 42 and Washington 34. Away from the West Coast, Philadelphia (162) and Denver (127) also over-index, while Chicago sits close to par at 106.

For a firm building an employment bench, the deepest candidate pool is on the West Coast, and that is also where the competition for each hire is hardest. A New York or London search for an employment partner starts from a thinner local market and should budget for a longer list and, often, a candidate who relocates.

Employment hiring is weighted toward associates. Partners made up 22.4% of employment lateral moves, 5.3 points below the 27.7% partner share across all practices. Associates took 61.6% of employment moves against 58.5% market-wide, and counsel 15.2% against 12.7%. Litigation, the practice that most employment lawyers also list, runs a partner share of 27.4%, much closer to the market.

In the Sartori & Partners lateral database, 339 employment partners changed firms in the past 12 months. The narrow partner flow is the cost driver of an employment mandate: a firm that wants a partner with a portable client base is competing for a small pool, while an associate or counsel hire draws on a wider one. One route around the gap is to hire at counsel level and promote.

The year-on-year view uses settled 12-month windows that end in September 2026. On that basis the employment count rose 6.9%, with 1,537 moves against 1,438 a year earlier. Across all practices the count rose 9.0%, from 13,128 to 14,305. Partner moves read differently: the partner count held flat (+7.4%), at 333 against 310, a gap small enough to sit inside the noise of the two counts.

Pensions, benefits and executive compensation, the closest neighbor on the advisory side, moved the same way: its count rose 16.6% on a much smaller base of 253 moves. A rising total does not make the partner search easier, because the extra moves have not lifted the partner count beyond the noise. A firm waiting for partner supply to grow will wait; the partner moves that happen are the ones a firm goes out and makes.

Employment laterals joined 452 different firms, yet the top 10 hirers took 30.0% of the moves. Across the market the top 10 take 12.9%, so the employment market is 2.3 times as concentrated. The first four names, Jackson Lewis, Littler Mendelson, Ogletree Deakins and Fisher & Phillips, are firms built around labor and employment work, and their national office networks absorb associates in volume.

Partner hiring is just as concentrated: the top 10 partner hirers took 29.7% of employment partner moves, against 13.5% for partners market-wide. Firms of 1,000+ lawyers took 46.9% of employment moves with a known firm size, below the 53.6% market share. For a full-service firm, the specialist employment platforms are the rival bidder on most hires and also the deepest source of trained associates.

Sartori & Partners data show 83.4% of employment movers also practice litigation. Pensions, benefits and executive compensation follows at 7.1%, and product liability at 4.1%. The employment lateral is mostly a courtroom lawyer: discrimination, retaliation and wage claims, class and collective actions. Pure advisory employment lawyers, who write handbooks and run investigations without a docket, are a minority of the moves.

That overlap widens the search. A firm short of employment partners can recruit from litigation benches with a labor docket, and an employment hire should be tested on trial and motion experience, not only on advisory reputation.

Start the search where the moves are. Los Angeles, Seattle and San Francisco over-index on employment hiring, so a West Coast office can recruit from a deep local pool, while a New York or London office should expect to look further afield. Plan for scarcity at partner level: with partners at 22.4% of employment moves and the partner count flat, a partner mandate will take longer than a mandate in a practice that tracks the market. Expect the specialist employment platforms on the other side of most offers, and widen the brief to litigators with a labor docket, who make up most of the movers. A firm that can only win at partner level should consider hiring strong counsel and promoting from within.