Practice · promotions · November 2026
Banking & Finance: promotions and time to partner
How Banking & Finance fills its partner bench: promotions against lateral partner arrivals, and how long the track to partner takes.
The last 12 months: November 2025 to October 2026
- 343
- Partner promotionsJune 2025 to May 2026
- 10.0 years
- Median time to partnerFive years of promotions
- 0.57
- Promotions per lateral partner12 months to May 2026
- 604
- Lateral partner arrivalsNovember 2025 to October 2026
What the data show
Sartori & Partners data record 343 partner promotions in Banking & Finance from June 2025 to May 2026. Promotions are confirmed about five months late, so this window ends earlier than the lateral figures. Over the same 12 months that is 0.57 promotions for every lateral partner hired, against 0.79 across the market: more of the partner bench here is bought than made.
Across five years of promotions, the median time from first year of practice to partner is 10.0 years, with the middle half between 9.0 years and 13.0 years. The market median is also 10.0 years. The median rests on 1,299 promotions.
On settled windows lateral partner moves in Banking & Finance went from 546 to 604, up 10.6% year on year.
For a firm planning succession in Banking & Finance, the market leans on lateral partners: a plan that relies on internal promotion alone runs against how peers fill the bench.
Firms by rank and band
Each firm appears as a rank and a band, never an exact count, and only with at least 10 moves in the window.
| Rank | Firm | Moves (band) |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | DLA Piper | 11-20 |
| 2 | Mayer Brown | 11-20 |
| 3 | Sidley Austin | 11-20 |
| 4 | Paul Hastings | 11-20 |
| 5 | Womble Bond Dickinson | 11-20 |
| 6 | Kirkland & Ellis | 11-20 |
| 7 | King & Spalding | 11-20 |
| 8 | Norton Rose Fulbright | 11-20 |
| 9 | Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe | 11-20 |
| 10 | Greenberg Traurig | 11-20 |
Related monitors and reports
Hiring in this market
Edition November 2026. Window: November 2025 to October 2026. Source: Sartori & Partners, from public law-firm announcements, firm websites and professional profiles, checked monthly. Methodology. Spot an error? [email protected].
For law firm leaders
Planning a partner hire in this market?
We run retained partner searches using the same data behind this page.