Anti-Bribery Hiring Is Partner Hiring: Partners Are 60.8% of Moves

A firm that sets out to hire anti-bribery and corruption lawyers is, in most cases, setting out to hire a partner. Sartori & Partners data show that partners made up 60.8% of the 97 anti-bribery lateral moves in the 12 months to October 2026. In the wider white collar, investigations and criminal practice the partner share was 41.6%, and across the whole lateral market it was 27.7%. The work explains part of it: clients bring a foreign bribery inquiry or a monitorship to a named lawyer they trust, and that lawyer is usually a partner with a record in front of prosecutors in more than one country. The rest of this report sets out what the tilt means for a search: who moves, where they sit, which firms hire them and how fast the pool refreshes.

The anti-bribery partner share sits 19.2 points above the white collar practice and 33.1 points above the market. Read as a ratio, an anti-bribery lateral is 2.2 times as likely to be a partner as the average lateral. The difference comes out of the associate ranks. Associates were 28.9% of anti-bribery moves, against 45.2% in white collar and 58.5% market-wide. Counsel took 9.3%, close to the 12.6% of the practice.

Title step-ups do not drive the weight. Lawyers who joined at a higher title than the one they left were 15.5% of anti-bribery moves, near 13.4% in the practice and 12.9% in the market. Anti-bribery partners mostly arrive already holding the title. Moves by these specialists that were recorded under the white collar practice made 18.9% of that practice's lateral moves, a sizable slice of the investigations market carried by a partner-heavy group. For a hiring firm the consequence is plain: an anti-bribery search should be budgeted and timed as a partner search, with a book of matters, a team question and a conflict check, not as an associate hire with a promotion attached.

The mix is not a one-year accident. Over the 3 years to October 2026, Sartori & Partners recorded 290 anti-bribery lateral moves, and partners were 54.1% of them. The white collar practice ran at 40.1% partners over the same period and the market at 26.9%. On every window the speciality sits well above both.

Volume tells a quieter story. The settled 12-month count of anti-bribery moves went from 86 to 101, and hiring held flat (+17.4%). Partner arrivals moved from 44 to 56, and partner hiring held flat (+27.3%) as well, on counts this small. The white collar practice held flat (+8.2%), while the whole lateral market rose 9.0%. The pool of anti-bribery partners who change firms each year is small and steady. A firm should not wait for a wave of movers; it should plan to compete for the handful who do move in any given year.

Washington, DC is the anchor. In the latest 12 months it took 30.9% of anti-bribery hires, against 5.6% of all lateral moves, an index of 551. The white collar practice as a whole reads 351 there, so the pull toward the capital is stronger still for this work.

The 3-year view shows the cross-border shape of the bench. Over 3 years Washington, DC took 21.4% of anti-bribery hires, London 15.5%, New York 13.8% and Paris 8.3%. In the white collar practice over the same 3 years, London held 7.2% and Paris 4.0%; across the market the two cities held 10.0% and 2.3%. New York, the largest white collar city at 17.0%, ranks behind London in this speciality.

The three-capital pattern follows the enforcement map: matters that start with one authority often draw in prosecutors in other countries, and clients want counsel who can sit across the table in each. For a firm, that widens the search. A Washington, DC partner with former government experience is the obvious target, but a London or Paris partner who has run parallel inquiries can fill the same seat in a cross-border practice, and the candidate pool there is proportionally deeper for this work than for white collar as a whole.

Among anti-bribery moves to firms whose size we know, firms of 1,000+ lawyers took 66.0%, two-thirds of the total. In the white collar practice the same class took 55.5% and across the market 53.6%. Firms of 400-999 lawyers took 21.6%, against 23.4% market-wide, and firms of 150-399 lawyers 9.3%. The hiring is also concentrated by name: the ten most active hirers took 38.5% of individual anti-bribery hires, against 21.2% in the practice and 12.9% in the market.

In the Sartori & Partners lateral database, Barnes & Thornburg ranks first among anti-bribery hirers, in the 6-10 band. Morgan, Lewis & Bockius, Greenberg Traurig and the firms below them on the list each sit in the 3-5 band. For a firm outside that group, each name on the list is a likely rival bidder for the same partner. Expect the candidate's current firm to counter and at least one active hirer to make an offer, and set the timetable with both in mind.

Treat the mandate as a partner search from the first call. With partners at 60.8% of anti-bribery laterals, the realistic candidate already holds the title and brings matters, and the annual flow is small: hiring held flat (+17.4%) on our latest settled count. Start in Washington, DC, where the index stands at 551, but run London and Paris in parallel if the practice is cross-border: over 3 years they took 15.5% and 8.3% of anti-bribery hires. A smaller firm competes against platforms that take 66.0% of the market for this work, so it needs a clear answer on conflicts, on government-facing bench strength and on the offices a partner can staff from. A firm that wants its own anti-bribery partners later should hire associates now: they are only 28.9% of moves, so the junior pool is thin and early hiring is the surer route.