Litigation Matters in 2026: No Client Industry Tops 5.7%

Ask where litigation work comes from and the answer is: from everywhere, in small pieces. Sartori & Partners data show 1,788 recorded litigation matters in the 12 months to October 2026, handled for 899 distinct clients. Read litigation demand by industry and no sector dominates: banks and financial institutions, the largest group, appear in 5.7% of matters, and asset managers and funds in 4.3%. We call this work matters rather than deals, because almost all of it is contested. For a firm leader weighing a litigation partner hire, the spread matters more than the total: it decides whether a candidate's client following is portable and whether a new group can be built around one sector.

Banks and financial institutions appear in 5.7% of litigation matters, against 7.1% of all dated deals. That gap of 1.4 points means the sector that tops the deal market carries less weight in contested work. Asset management and funds follow at 4.3%, real estate at 4.2% and technology and software at 3.4%. Below them comes a long run of smaller sectors, from oil and gas at 2.7% to automotive at 2.2%.

A few sectors weigh more in litigation than in the deal market. Individuals and consumers appear in 2.5% of litigation matters against 1.4% of all deals, and professional services firms in 2.1% against 1.1%. Others weigh much less. Financial sponsors appear in 1.6% of litigation matters but 6.9% of all deals; pharma and biotech in 2.5% against 6.8%. One matter can touch several industries, so each share is read on its own and never added to the others. For a firm, the lesson is that a litigation hire pitched as a single-sector specialist is selling a slice of work no larger than the 5.7% ceiling above.

The closest comparison is intellectual property, whose recorded work is also almost all contested. There the largest client industry, consumer goods and retail, appears in 8.8% of matters, a clear anchor that litigation lacks. Its client base is also larger: 3,121 distinct clients against 899 for litigation. In litigation the 1,788 matters work out to 2.0 per client, against 1.7 per client in IP.

A ratio of 2.0 matters per client describes a practice that lives on many relationships, each yielding a matter or two a year. Repeat work for a single client is the exception in the public record. That shapes how a litigation partner's book should be tested in a lateral search. A list of names is not the point; the question is how many of those clients sent more than one matter, and whether the partner or the platform won them.

Recorded litigation matters went from 1,616 to 1,767 between the two settled 12-month windows, so they rose 9.3%. In the Sartori & Partners lateral records, litigation moves over the same windows went from 5,281 to 5,679, which means hiring rose 7.5%. All dated deals across practices rose 10.6%. Work and hiring moved together here, which is not the case everywhere: IP matters rose 20.9% while the IP bench lagged.

The bars show the size of the recorded book each year, not a growth rate, because matter records start in 2022 and earlier years are not comparable. The 2026 bar, at 1,544 with two months still to come, already sits near the full 2025 total of 1,677. Partner moves in litigation were steady, at 1,505 against 1,492, so most of the added hiring came below partner level. More matters and a steady partner flow point to firms adding associates and counsel to staff existing work rather than buying new books.

Litigation accounts for 39.9% of all lateral moves, the largest practice, yet only 3.7% of recorded deals and matters. Most disputes are never announced: they settle, run under confidentiality, or are not the kind of result a firm publishes. The matters that do surface are almost all contested, with disputes and investigations making up 98.0% of the total.

Values are rarer still. Only 6.4% of litigation matters carry a published value, with a median of $50 million where one is given; in IP the disclosed share is 2.0%. Counts of matters and clients are the measure to trust, and value claims in a candidate's pitch need checking against court records or references. A firm assessing a litigation group should ask for matter lists and client counts, not headline amounts.

Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher heads the list of firms by recorded litigation matters, in the 41-60 band, followed by Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan in the same band. The rest of the top 10 sit in the 21-40 band, so no firm holds a large slice of the public record either. Gordon Rees Scully Mansukhani closes this list and also heads the list of litigation hirers, while King & Spalding appears among the top 10 partner hirers in litigation.

The list mixes global firms, trial specialists and insurance defense firms. That mix fits a client base this scattered: no single model of litigation practice captures the work. On the hiring side the picture is just as open, with the top 10 hirers taking 12.0% of litigation lateral moves across 928 hiring firms. Candidates with recorded matters sit at many firms, not a handful.

Sartori & Partners figures describe a litigation market with no dominant client sector and no dominant firm. Matters rose 9.3% on settled windows, in line with hiring, which rose 7.5%. Three consequences follow. First, test portability client by client: with 2.0 matters per client, a partner's book is many small relationships, and each one can stay behind. Second, build litigation groups across sectors rather than around one, since the largest client industry appears in only 5.7% of matters; financial institutions and asset managers are the deepest pools, but neither is large enough to carry a group alone. Third, judge candidates on matter counts, not values, because published values are rare. With partner moves steady and total hiring up, the competition is for the associates and counsel who staff the growing volume.