Chicago Real Estate Hiring: Counsel Are 17.9% of Laterals

Sartori & Partners data show that counsel make up a larger part of the market for real estate lawyers Chicago firms hire than they do in real estate elsewhere or in Chicago's other practices. Over the last 12 months, counsel were 17.9% of Chicago real estate lateral moves, against 14.6% for the practice across every market and 9.5% for Chicago at all practices. Partners went the other way: 23.2% of the moves, against 28.9% across the practice. The cell is small, 56 moves in 12 months, so these shares are rough sizes rather than exact splits; the gap to the city is still wide enough to plan around. For a firm building a Chicago real estate bench, the counsel tier is where the city supplies more candidates than its averages suggest, and the lateral partner is where it supplies fewer.

In the Sartori & Partners lateral database, the counsel share for Chicago real estate sits 3.3 points above the practice and 8.4 points above the city. Measured against Chicago as a whole, a real estate lateral was 1.9 times as likely to be counsel. The 3-year view puts the cell at 13.4%, close to the practice at 13.5% and above the city at 10.0%. So the latest 12 months mark a step up on the cell's own longer record, which already sat above the Chicago average.

Little of that counsel flow is promotion by move. Only 10.7% of Chicago real estate laterals joined at a higher title than the one they left, against 13.6% across the practice and 8.4% in Chicago. That measure folds in associates who stepped up to counsel and lawyers who stepped up to partner, so it does not isolate the counsel tier, but it shows most of these people arrive at the title they already held. For a hiring partner, a counsel search here starts from a deeper pool than the city average suggests, and the offer has to sell the platform and the work rather than a new title.

Partners made 23.2% of Chicago real estate laterals over 12 months, 5.7 points below real estate across the practice at 28.9% and 3.6 points below Chicago at all practices at 26.8%. The longer record reads differently. Over 3 years partners were 37.6% of the cell's 149 arrivals, above both the practice at 31.7% and the city at 28.1%. Associates filled the rest of the latest year: 58.9% of the moves, against 56.4% across the practice and 61.6% for the city.

Partner flow in Chicago real estate has not stopped; the newest 12 months simply carried more counsel around it. For a firm that wants a partner with a Chicago real estate following, recent supply is thinner than the 3-year record implies. Two routes follow. One is to widen the brief to counsel close to partnership and hire them with a defined path; the other is to start the partner search well before the need is urgent and budget for a longer process.

Volume does not explain the shift in the level mix. Sartori & Partners counts put Chicago real estate at 62 lateral moves in the earlier settled 12 months and 58 in the latest, a steady reading at this size. Real estate across the practice rose 7.9%, from 1,409 to 1,520 moves. Chicago at all practices held flat (+9.7%), from 548 to 601 moves.

Chicago's weight in the practice is modest. The city took 3.7% of real estate lateral moves over 12 months, an index of 87 against the city's share of the whole market, which leaves real estate slightly under-weighted in Chicago. Seen from the city side, real estate was 9.4% of Chicago's lateral moves. With a steady count and a practice that grew elsewhere, a Chicago real estate search is not competing against a hiring wave: the constraint is who moves, not how many.

Smaller firms buy more of this market than they do elsewhere. Over 3 years, firms under 150 lawyers took 21.5% of Chicago real estate lateral arrivals, against 10.0% for real estate across the practice and 13.7% for Chicago at all practices. That is 2.1 times the practice's share. The 12-month figures keep the order: 17.9% for the cell, 11.9% for the practice and 12.8% for the city.

Firms with 1,000+ lawyers still took the largest share over 3 years, 41.7% against 43.1% across the practice. The difference sits in the middle: the 150-399 lawyers group took 7.6% of Chicago real estate arrivals against 17.6% across the practice. On the sending side, lawyers who left firms of 400-999 lawyers made 36.1% of the cell's arrivals, against 25.4% across the practice.

Hiring is concentrated as well. The ten most active firms took 37.7% of individual Chicago real estate hires over 3 years, against 15.1% for the practice and 21.4% for Chicago, out of 66 firms that hired at all. A large firm recruiting here should expect firms under 150 lawyers and a short list of repeat buyers at the table for the same candidates, and should price the offer and the pitch for that competition.

The lawyers who moved into Chicago real estate carry a broad mix of work. Over 3 years, 65.1% listed commercial transactions among their focus areas, 52.3% real estate finance and 50.3% leasing, while development came in at 26.2%. A lawyer can hold several, so the shares add to more than the whole and describe overlap, not a split. Finance featured 2.0 times as often as development.

Across the practice, banking and finance was recorded on 33.4% of real estate lateral moves over 12 months. That is a different measure, the practice group on the move rather than the lawyer's own focus, so it does not line up with the Chicago figures; it does confirm that finance-side real estate work travels with lateral moves throughout the practice. In practice a Chicago candidate who closes acquisitions will often also handle the loan documents and the leases. A firm whose demand is lender-side or landlord-side can write the brief around that work and still draw on most of the people who move; a pure development hire draws on a smaller group.

Sartori & Partners figures point to four practical steps. First, treat counsel as a core source of Chicago real estate laterals, not a fallback: at 17.9% of moves against 9.5% for the city, it is the tier where supply runs ahead of the local average. Second, plan partner searches for length: partners made 23.2% of moves over 12 months, below the cell's 3-year share of 37.6%. Third, start with the local bench: at least 66.4% of arrivals over 3 years came from lawyers who left a Chicago office, and 13.2% of the cell's moves with both cities known involved a change of city, against 21.2% across the practice. Fourth, expect firms under 150 lawyers in the same searches: they took 17.9% of the cell's arrivals in the last 12 months. On the demand side, Chicago law-firm career pages carried 31 open real estate roles on the data date.