What it costs a company to match Milbank's 2026 ladder

Sartori & Partners maps nearly 1.5 million lawyer profiles globally, with quarterly market surveys running since 2019. Sartori maps about 67,000 lawyers in New York. We have worked this market for more than 10 years, for companies filling in-house counsel and associate-general-counsel seats and for firms filling the lockstep rungs those companies hire from. The first question on this page is the buyer’s: what does the dated table cost to put on a company offer, class year by class year.

Thomson Reuters Institute and Georgetown Law, in the 2026 Report on the State of the US Legal Market posted 7 January 2026, measured 2025 demand as billable hours: average growth of 2.5 percent, a July peak of 4.4 percent, third-quarter growth of 3.9 percent year on year. Worked rates rose 7.3 percent for the average firm. Average Am Law 100 lawyer standard rates cracked $1,000; everyone else averaged around $600. Lawyer FTE grew 2.9 percent. The report said transactional work (M&A, real estate, corporate general) and countercyclical work (litigation, labor and employment) grew together — a pairing last seen in 2011–2013 and late 2019–2020. That mix is why a finance-heavy New York lockstep could fund a base raise without waiting on a single practice.

Deal volumes priced the same desks. SIFMA’s Equities 4Q25 research quarterly, using Dealogic completed M&A, put 2025 completed U.S. M&A at $1,789.2 billion, up 27.1 percent year on year, with private-equity deal value at $1,155.5 billion, up 36.3 percent. The 2Q26 quarterly put completed M&A through the first half of 2026 at $1,459.2 billion, up 29.9 percent year on year. SIFMA’s Capital Markets Fact Book, published 13 August 2026, recorded 2025 corporate bond issuance of $2.2 trillion, up 12.5 percent, and announced U.S. M&A of $2.6 trillion, up 58 percent. Those are issuance and deal-value series, not law-firm fee take. They are why capital-markets, leveraged-finance, and sponsor-M&A associates — Milbank’s rotation groups — were the rungs that took the $20,000 step.

Citi Law Firm Group’s nine-month 2025 flash survey, published in the 2026 Citi Hildebrandt Client Advisory (185 firms), is the mix call a chief legal officer should read before matching a fifth-year. Through the first nine months of 2025, surveyed firms posted revenue growth of 11.3 percent, demand growth of 1.9 percent, rate growth of 9.6 percent, and headcount growth of 2.9 percent, with equity-partner headcount down 0.5 percent and income partners up 6 percent. Looking forward, 86 percent of large firms planned to increase associate ranks through 2027, but only 35 percent planned to increase first-year classes and 37 percent summer classes. The 2025 average first-year class size was 109. The survey describes a pyramid flattening toward a cylinder as generative AI takes low-value junior work. A company matching a class-of-2021 base of $385,000 is matching the scarce band, not the campus hire.

The company-side constraint is the opposite shape. Thomson Reuters Institute’s 2025 Legal Department Operations Index (survey July 2025, 128 U.S. corporate legal-department professionals) found 56 percent of departments under-resourced, 55 percent with flat or decreasing legal-department budgets, and 46 percent expecting to bring more work in-house — while 86 percent of 2024 legal spend still went to traditional firms. Expected outside-counsel spend increases of up to 20 percent were attributed to rising firm rates plus flat in-house headcount. The 2026 State of the Corporate Law Department Report (24 March 2026) found that as of the fourth quarter of 2025, 36 percent of general counsel expected to increase overall outside-counsel spend over the next year against 20 percent expecting a decrease. A flat legal budget and a lockstep-matching offer are two different conversations.

Three dated legal events kept mid-level hours on. The Supreme Court, on 20 February 2026, held in Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump (6–3) that IEEPA does not authorize presidential tariffs, unwinding a February 2025–February 2026 stack Milbank’s own note described as 10 to 145 percent on most imports — trade, MAE, and then refund work for corporate and project desks. DOJ and the FTC reported 2,006 Hart-Scott-Rodino notifications in fiscal 2025, 31.8 percent valued over $1 billion (2 July 2026); the 2023 Merger Guidelines remained in force after 18 February 2025 staff memos. The American Bankruptcy Institute / Epiq count for calendar 2025 was 565,759 total filings, up 11 percent, with commercial filings at 31,810, up 5 percent (6 January 2026). Those dockets do not set associate lockstep. They explain why years 3–8 on finance, M&A, restructuring, and trade desks were the rungs a general counsel found expensive to hire and expensive to replace with a first-year.

Milbank could pay the table from a measured 2025 P&L. Legal Business, on 16 April 2026, reported firmwide revenue of $2.14 billion, up 15 percent, and profits per equity partner of $7.62 million, up 12.1 percent from $6.8 million. Reuters on 27 July 2026 restated the $7.62 million PEP figure via American Lawyer. That is context for who can print lockstep. It is not a per-associate cost of the raise, and it is not what a company matching the table will spend.