Health Care Path to Partner 2026: Buying Is the Default

Health care firms add partners mainly by hiring them, and the usual excuses for that do not hold. Sartori & Partners data show that health care partners are made on the market's clock: a median of 10.0 years from the first year of practice, the same as the market's 10.0 years, with 24.6% promoted within 8 years against 23.2% across all practices and 78.5% within 12 years against 75.4%. Anyone asking how long to make partner in health care law gets the market's answer. Lateral supply is not booming either: health care lateral partner hiring held flat (+6.7%) year on year, 160 hires against 150. Yet between June 2025 and May 2026 health care firms promoted 0.52 lawyers to partner for each lateral partner they brought in over the same months, against 0.79 in the market. With no slow track to blame and no hiring surge to ride, buying is simply the practice's normal way to grow its partnership. The sections below measure the clock, set it against the buying habit, compare health care with private equity and with the practices it overlaps, and close with what a firm building a health care group should do next.

Time to partner counts the years from the first year of practice to the promotion. Over the last 5 years Sartori & Partners recorded 353 health care promotions with a known start year. The middle of the class matches the market: the median was 10.0 years against 10.0 years, and the mean 11.0 years against 11.1 years. The middle half of health care promotions fell between 9.0 years and 12.0 years. The edges of the class sit close to the market too. The early group, promoted within 8 years, was 24.6% in health care and 23.2% across all practices, a gap of 1.4 points. The share finished within 12 years was 78.5% against 75.4%, a gap of 3.1 points.

Gaps of this size on a class of a few hundred are what chance alone produces, so they do not make health care a fast track or a slow one. That is the useful point. A firm planning a home-grown health care partner can plan on the same timetable it uses in other practices, and the timing of a promotion case is no reason to look outside.

The make-or-buy ratio puts the partners a practice promotes against the lateral partners it hires over the same 12 months. Across all practices firms promoted 2,955 lawyers to partner and hired 3,749 lateral partners from June 2025 to May 2026, a ratio of 0.79. Health care ran at 0.52: 81 promotions, and for every one of them about two lateral partner hires. In the Sartori & Partners promotion figures that places health care with the practices most reliant on lateral partners.

If the clock is normal, the low ratio has to come from the number of partner seats firms keep for their own associates. Health care groups grow through regulatory, transactional and enforcement work that clients want led by a partner with a book already built, and a firm that needs that book this year hires it rather than waiting for an associate to grow one. The consequence for a hiring partner is that the lateral market, not the associate class, sets the pace of a health care build.

Private equity is the obvious comparison: the two practices share 7.9% of health care lateral moves, through investment in clinics, physician groups and health services companies. Private equity promoted 31.8% of its new partners within 8 years and 86.7% within 12 years, both above the health care figures. It also made more of its own partners, at 0.68 promotions per lateral partner hire against 0.52 in health care. Private equity firms promoted 296 partners in the 12 months, health care firms 81.

So health care is neither the quickest track nor a practice where promotion carries the growth. Private equity converts associates sooner and keeps more of the partner seats for them. Health care converts on the market's timetable and still hands most new seats to lateral arrivals. For a firm with both groups, the health care associate is the one more likely to see an outside partner placed above them, and the one a rival can approach with a partner title on offer.

Health care work is rarely recorded alone. Litigation is tagged on 31.5% of health care lateral moves, corporate and M&A on 21.2%, and white collar and investigations on 13.1%. Each of those neighbors makes more of its partners than health care. Litigation promoted 0.80 partners per lateral partner hire, corporate and M&A 0.75 and white collar 0.63, all above the health care figure of 0.52.

That gap matters for career planning inside a firm. A health care associate whose work also sits in litigation or corporate may find the clearer route to partner runs through the neighboring group, which promotes more freely. Firms that want to keep health care talent should make the health care partner case explicit, or watch their strongest associates drift toward the group that promotes them sooner or toward the firm that will hire them in as partners.

The flow of health care partners between firms did not change much. In the Sartori & Partners lateral database, health care lateral partner hiring held flat (+6.7%) year on year: 160 partner hires in the 12 months to September 2026 against 150 a year earlier, a gap that counts of this size can produce by chance. Partners made up 36.3% of all health care lateral moves over the latest 12 months, against 37.1% over three years, and the ten most active partner hirers took 34.0% of partner moves.

Washington, DC carries an index of 225 against the market for health care lateral moves, which reflects how closely the work follows federal agencies. A steady supply of lateral partners against firms that rely on buying means every search competes for the same people. The groups listed above recruit the same candidates every year, and a newcomer has to offer a platform, not only a title.

Treat the associate class as a real source. With 78.5% of health care partners promoted within 12 years, a senior associate in the tenth or eleventh year is close to the practice's usual finish. Promoting that lawyer costs less than a lateral search and removes a candidate a rival would otherwise pursue.

Budget for lateral partners anyway. At 0.52 promotions per lateral partner hire, against 0.79 in the market, competitors buy most of their health care partners, and the supply of movers held steady rather than grew. Expect a long list of interested firms for each credible candidate, and start searches before the need is urgent.

Watch the exits as well as the arrivals. For every hundred health care lateral moves over the last 6 months, 18.40 lawyers left firms for companies, against 11.40 in private equity, so in-house roles compete with law firms for the same senior associates. A firm that leaves a strong associate waiting past the twelfth year gives both a rival firm and a health system the opening.