Appellate Lawyer Hiring in 2026: The Washington Bar

Count the appellate lawyers Washington DC offices recruited over the last 12 months and the capital comes first: 31 of the speciality's 197 lateral moves, or 15.7%, Sartori & Partners data show. Washington holds only 5.6% of lateral moves across all practices, which gives appellate work an index of 280 there. New York, the largest lateral market, reads 93 for the same speciality, slightly under its weight. The litigation practice as a whole indexes 116 in Washington, so the pull belongs to the appellate bench, not to litigation in general.

The second feature is seniority. Appellate moves are mostly partner moves, and appellate is a small slice of its practice: 3.4% of litigation moves carry the appellate focus. The sections below set the speciality against litigation and the whole market on geography, seniority, volume and the firms that hire, and close on what each finding means for a firm planning an appellate hire.

In the Sartori & Partners lateral database, Washington's share of appellate moves is 2.8 times the share it holds in the market as a whole. New York shows the opposite pattern: it takes 13.7% of appellate moves against 14.8% of all lateral moves. In the litigation practice the two cities sit at 6.5% and 13.0%, so general litigation keeps New York well ahead while the appellate bench reverses the order.

The reason is the docket. Appellate work gathers where the courts of last resort and the federal agencies sit: the Supreme Court, the federal appeals court that hears many challenges to agency rules, and the government offices that argue federal appeals. Lawyers who have clerked or argued there tend to build their practices close by, and firms that want them open or expand a Washington bench rather than ask them to relocate. A New York or regional appellate group without a Washington seat pitches for high-court and agency appeals from a distance.

Over 3 years the order was reversed. New York took 13.1% of the speciality's 596 moves and Washington 11.6%. Even then, Washington's appellate share stood far above its 5.2% share of the whole market over the same period. The 12-month lead rests on 31 moves against 27, a gap of 4 lawyers, so read it as a close contest that has tipped toward the capital, not as a new order.

The longer view also shows where appellate work sits outside the two main centers. Dallas took 4.4% of appellate moves against 2.2% of the market, Miami 3.5% against 1.9%, and Los Angeles 6.2% against 4.8%. Texas, Florida and California run large state appellate systems of their own, and the shares show it. These are small pools, though: a firm adding an appellate partner in one of them chooses from a short list.

Washington is also the most common city appellate movers leave. It was the origin of 13.2% of appellate movers in the last 12 months, against 5.6% for litigation movers and 5.0% for the market. A firm recruiting in the speciality will find more of its candidates in Washington offices than in any other city, which means approaching direct rivals and planning for a counteroffer.

Partners accounted for 48.2% of appellate laterals in the last 12 months, against 27.4% in litigation and 27.7% in the market. Associates were 34.5%, where litigation runs at 57.7%, and counsel took 17.3% against 14.4%. The senior tilt is not a one-year effect: over 3 years partners were 46.6% of appellate moves.

Appellate movers also step up more often: 18.3% joined at a higher title than the one they left, against 13.4% in litigation and 12.9% in the market, and the 3-year rate was 19.5%. That fits how appellate careers run. Groups are small, partnership slots open slowly, and a lateral move is a common way to the title. For a hiring firm, a counsel-level candidate with a record of argued appeals can be a partner hire, and the candidate will weigh the offer as one.

Appellate hiring held flat (-1.5%) year on year, 194 moves against 197. Over the same windows litigation hiring rose 7.5%, on 5,679 moves against 5,281, and the whole market rose 9.0%. Partner moves point the same way: appellate partner hiring held flat (-2.1%), 92 against 94, while partner hiring across the market rose 8.4%.

Calendar years confirm the plateau: 197 appellate moves in 2022, 199 in 2024 and 199 in 2025. Sartori & Partners figures describe a small, stable bench inside the largest practice in the market. Supply is not rising with demand elsewhere in litigation, so a firm that waits for more appellate candidates to come to market will wait. Plan the hire on the current pool and expect competition for each name on it.

Firms of 1,000+ lawyers took 43.7% of appellate moves, against 53.6% across the market. Firms of 400-999 lawyers took 28.9% against 23.4%, and firms of 150-399 lawyers 19.3% against 13.3%. The mix is close to litigation's, where the largest firms take 43.3%: appellate hiring follows the litigation platforms it serves rather than the market's tilt toward the biggest firms.

Gordon Rees Scully Mansukhani heads the 12-month list in the 6-10 band of hires, followed by Morrison & Foerster and McDermott Will & Schulte in the 3-5 band. The ten most active hirers took 22.0% of appellate moves, against 12.0% for litigation's top 10, out of 130 firms that hired at least one appellate lawyer; in a speciality this small, a few hires move a firm up the list. Lawyers also move one at a time: 3.0% of appellate moves came as part of a team, against 2.0% in litigation.

The firms that appear most often on appellate matters on record are a different group. Over 3 years Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher heads that list in the 21-40 band of matters, and Gordon Rees Scully Mansukhani is the one firm on both lists. Court filings are a record of work, not of revenue, but they show where experienced appellate partners already sit, and where a lateral move away carries the most weight for the firm that loses the partner and the one that gains one.

Start in Washington. It takes 15.7% of appellate moves at an index of 280, and it is also the city appellate movers most often leave, so a Washington search means approaching lawyers at rival offices and pricing in the counteroffer. Appellate movers change city in 19.3% of moves, close to the market's 20.5%: relocating a partner into the capital can work, but it should be the fallback, not the plan.

Expect a partner search. With partners at 48.2% of moves and 18.3% of movers stepping up a title, the strongest candidate may be counsel ready for partnership: price the offer as a partner offer. Move faster than a general litigation search would, because the pool is not growing, with appellate hiring that held flat (-1.5%) year on year. Outside Washington, Dallas and Miami over-index on small counts over 3 years; a firm building there should hire one strong state appellate specialist rather than wait for a team, since only 3.0% of appellate moves arrive as one.