Trade Secrets Lateral Hiring in 2026: A Partner Market

Trade secrets lawyers lateral hiring is, above all, partner hiring. Sartori & Partners data show that partners made up 51.4% of the 249 trade secrets lateral moves in the 12 months to October 2026, against 34.4% in intellectual property, the practice the specialty sits under, and 27.7% across the whole market. Few corners of the lateral market lean this far toward the top of the pyramid. For a firm that wants to add trade secrets capacity, the realistic hire is a partner with a practice of their own, not an associate who can be trained into the work.

The difference shows at the bottom of the pyramid as clearly as at the top. Associates were 34.5% of trade secrets moves, against 49.7% in intellectual property and 58.5% in the market. The partner share runs 17.0 points above the parent practice and 23.7 points above the market. Counsel sit near the market norm, at 14.1% against 12.7%.

The work explains the mix. A trade secrets case often opens with an emergency motion over a departing employee or a rival product, and the client wants someone who has already run injunction hearings and expert fights on short notice. Junior lawyers who staff those cases usually change firms as general litigators. The lawyers who move under a trade secrets label are mostly the ones who have built a practice around it.

For a hiring firm, this is a partner pool. A plan that counts on hiring trade secrets associates and growing them into partners works against the flow; a plan that hires the partner and staffs the cases from an existing litigation bench works with it.

This is not a one-year spike. Over the last three years, partners accounted for 50.9% of trade secrets moves in the Sartori & Partners lateral database, against 33.5% in intellectual property and 26.9% in the market. Partner hiring in the specialty held flat (+7.4%) year on year, at 130 partner moves in the latest settled 12 months against 121 the year before. Across all practices, lateral partner hiring rose 8.4%, from 3,558 to 3,858.

Apart from a dip in 2023, the yearly partner count has sat in the same range since 2022, with 127 partner moves in 2025 and 116 so far in 2026. Hiring at every level in the specialty held flat (+6.7%) on the same settled windows.

The consequence is a fixed pool. Firms compete each year for roughly the same number of trade secrets partners willing to move, and the firms that know those partners before they are ready to talk get the first conversation.

The closest comparison is restrictive covenants and non-competes, the employment-side specialty that handles many of the same disputes from the other end of the employment contract. Partners there took 42.7% of moves, high for the market but below trade secrets, and over three years the gap is wider: 37.2% against 50.9%. Non-compete lawyers also changed city more often, 20.1% against 13.4%, and stepped up a title more often, 16.3% against 11.2%.

Some firms recruit on both sides. Greenberg Traurig ranks 2nd among trade secrets hirers and 3rd among non-compete hirers over the 12 months, and Littler Mendelson ranks 5th and 6th.

For a firm building a trade secrets group, the non-compete bench is the nearer source of associates and counsel, with associates at 41.4% of its moves. The partner who leads the group is more likely to come from the trade secrets side itself.

Geography is the second feature that sets the specialty apart. San Francisco took 13.7% of trade secrets moves, an index of 426 against the city's weight in the whole lateral market, more than four times its usual share. Even intellectual property as a whole, which over-indexes in San Francisco at 292, falls well short of that. Los Angeles stands at 182. New York, the largest city for the specialty at 14.5% of moves, sits at 98, in line with its place in the market.

The lawyers also tend to stay where they are. Only 13.4% of trade secrets movers changed city, against 20.5% in the market and 15.9% in intellectual property. Technology companies, and the employee departures and product disputes they generate, keep the work in a few regions, and the partners who handle it build their reputation with the courts and companies nearby.

A firm that wants a trade secrets partner on the West Coast should plan to hire from a competitor in the same city, not to relocate someone from New York or Chicago.

Trade secrets hiring runs through fewer hands than the market as a whole. The ten most active firms took 25.3% of individual trade secrets hires over the 12 months, against 12.9% for the market's ten most active hirers and 15.2% in intellectual property. Part of that gap is size: 125 firms hired at least one trade secrets lawyer in the period, against 1,291 across the market, and a small field concentrates more easily. Over three years the ten most active firms took 17.2% of trade secrets hires, against 12.2% market-wide, so the lead holds on the longer window. The firms below hired the most trade secrets partners over those three years.

Groups move here more than elsewhere: 6.4% of trade secrets moves came with colleagues who joined the same firm within a quarter, against 1.5% market-wide and 2.6% in non-competes. Large firms do most of the hiring: among moves to firms of known size, firms of 1,000+ lawyers took 54.6%, close to the market's 53.6%. Over three years, counting only moves where the firm's size is known, firms under 150 lawyers were the previous firm for 10.9% of trade secrets movers, against 11.4% across all practices, but the new firm for only 6.1%, against 8.6% market-wide.

Small firms supply trade secrets candidates at close to the market rate, but are a weaker buyer of them. A firm outside the busiest hirers is bidding against groups that have done this repeatedly; its realistic edge is a partner at a boutique or mid-size practice who wants a broader platform.

Sartori & Partners counted 161 trade secrets matters on public court records over three years, every one of them a dispute, with 65 in the latest 12 months. Technology and software companies were party to 21.7% of those matters. These are filings on record, not a measure of fees, but they confirm that demand comes from contested cases that reward courtroom experience.

Firms also grow their own partners: 68 trade secrets lawyers were promoted to partner in the 12 months to May 2026. The path is long. Over 5 years, the median time to partner was 10.0 years, against 11.0 years in non-competes, and only 21.5% made partner within 8 years. A firm that needs the capacity this year will hire it.

Budget for a partner. With 51.4% of movers at partner level, a trade secrets search will mostly surface partners, and the offer will be a partner offer: origination, rates, conflicts and the cases that come along.

Search where the work is. San Francisco and Los Angeles, at indexes of 426 and 182, hold far more of this market than their size suggests, and candidates there rarely relocate.

Ask who comes along. With 6.4% of moves made in groups, a partner may bring the associate or counsel who knows the files, which answers the staffing gap a partner-heavy market creates. Where no one comes along, the non-compete bench, with 41.4% associates among its movers, is the deeper pool below partner.

Move early. Trade secrets partner hiring held flat (+7.4%) while partner hiring across the market rose 8.4%, so the pool is not growing with the market. The firms that hire these partners repeatedly are already in the conversation.