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Proprietary research · Legal talent markets

The Sartori Research Programme

The figures we publish about legal talent markets are ours. This page explains what we collect, how large each city cohort is, and how to read the numbers you find across our market pages.

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01 The programme

We report from our own data, not from someone else's.

Legal recruitment runs on assertion. Firms are told the market is tight, that packages are moving, that a book will travel — rarely with a number attached, and almost never with a method behind the number.

We built the opposite. Since 2019 Sartori & Partners has run a continuous research programme over its own records: a global map approaching 1.5 million lawyer profiles, tens of thousands of structured interviews with candidates and hiring clients, a quarterly market survey, and process telemetry from every mandate we close. Across the 68 markets published below, the interview cohorts alone total 22,075 structured conversations.

It exists because we need it to do the work — to price a package, to judge whether a book is portable, to tell a client whether four months is realistic. Publishing it is secondary, and it is published in aggregate only.

02 Instruments

Four instruments, one programme.

I

Market mapping

A living map of the profession rather than a contact list: close to 1.5 million lawyer profiles worldwide, maintained continuously and sliced by firm, practice, seniority and movement history. Every city figure quoted on our market pages is drawn from this map.

II

Structured interviews

Tens of thousands of structured conversations with candidates and hiring clients, recorded against a fixed question set so answers can be compared across cities and years. Each market carries its own interview cohort, fixed and published below.

III

Quarterly market survey

A repeating survey running since 2019 on compensation expectations, mobility triggers, counter-offer behaviour and equity-path sentiment. Because the instrument is unchanged, movement between waves is signal rather than noise.

IV

Mandate telemetry

Process records from our own closed and abandoned searches: time from approach to offer, offer-to-acceptance windows, counter-offer incidence, and the complications that extend a timeline. This is the part of the data no public source holds.

03 City cohorts

What we have interviewed, market by market.

Each market carries one fixed interview cohort. Every Sartori page covering that city cites the same figure — the cohort belongs to the research programme, not to the page.

MarketLawyers mappedStructured interviews
New York 67,000 1,675
Washington, District of Columbia 52,000 1,300
London, United Kingdom 30,000 750
Madrid, Spain 30,000 750
Los Angeles, California 23,000 575
Dallas, Texas 20,000 500
Sydney, Australia 18,000 450
Milan, Italy 16,000 400
Rome, Italy 16,000 400
San Francisco, California 14,000 350
Melbourne, Australia 14,000 350
Hong Kong 14,000 350
Chicago, Illinois 13,000 325
Atlanta, Georgia 12,000 300
Houston, Texas 11,000 275
San Diego, California 11,000 275
Barcelona, Spain 11,000 275
Tokyo, Japan 11,000 275
Miami, Florida 10,000 250
Paris, France 9,000 250
Munich, Germany 9,000 250
Seattle, Washington 8,500 250
Düsseldorf, Germany 8,500 250
Cologne, Germany 8,500 250
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 7,500 250
Austin, Texas 7,000 250
Baltimore, Maryland 6,500 250
Singapore 6,000 250
Minneapolis, Minnesota 6,000 250
Northern Virginia, Virginia 6,000 250
Santa Clara, California 6,000 250
Brussels, Belgium 6,000 250
Frankfurt, Germany 5,000 250
Denver, Colorado 5,000 250
Phoenix, Arizona 5,000 250
Tampa, Florida 5,000 250
Stuttgart, Germany 5,000 250
Riyadh, Saudi Arabia 5,000 250
Indianapolis, Indiana 5,000 250
Columbus, Ohio 4,500 250
Charlotte, North Carolina 4,000 250
Nashville, Tennessee 4,000 250
Richmond, Virginia 4,000 250
Raleigh, North Carolina 4,000 250
Portland, Oregon 4,000 250
Naples, Italy 4,000 250
San Antonio, Texas 4,000 250
Boston, Massachusetts 3,500 250
Turin, Italy 3,500 250
Amsterdam, Netherlands 3,000 250
Dublin, Ireland 3,000 250
West Palm Beach, Florida 3,000 250
Dubai, United Arab Emirates 3,000 250
Salt Lake City, Utah 3,000 250
Milwaukee, Wisconsin 3,000 250
Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates 2,500 250
Louisville, Kentucky 2,500 250
Lyon, France 2,500 250
Bologna, Italy 2,500 250
Hartford, Connecticut 2,500 250
Antwerp, Belgium 2,000 250
Vilnius, Lithuania 1,500 250
Detroit, Michigan 1,500 250
Rotterdam, Netherlands 1,300 250
The Hague, Netherlands 1,300 250
Tallinn, Estonia 1,200 250
Providence, Rhode Island 1,200 250
Riga, Latvia 1,000 250
04 How to read it

What the numbers mean, and what they do not.

A figure is only useful if you know its population, its period and its limits. Ours carry all three.

Population. Interview findings are reported against the cohort that produced them — partners, associates or in-house counsel in a named market — never against the whole mapped population of that city. Mapping figures describe coverage; interview figures describe evidence. They are different numbers doing different jobs. Markets under 10,000 mapped lawyers carry a fixed minimum cohort of 250 interviews: the cohort is the evidence base, not a sampling rate, so in the smallest markets it covers a large share of the bar.

Period. Findings state their window, typically 12 to 36 months. Mandate telemetry covers closed and abandoned files over the stated period, and its counts are smaller than survey counts by an order of magnitude — they are searches, not conversations.

Limits. Self-reported figures are labelled as such. Where candidate claims and verified data diverge — portable originations being the clearest case — we publish the gap rather than the flattering number. Nothing here is audited by a third party, and we do not present it as though it were.

Where do the figures on your market pages come from?

Every city page separates two kinds of number. Public market facts — compensation scales, hiring volumes, firm economics — are cited to their published source with a date. Figures attributed to Sartori & Partners come from this research programme: the market map, the city interview cohort, the quarterly survey and our own mandate telemetry.

How large is the interview cohort for my city?

Each market has one fixed cohort, listed in the table on this page. The same figure is used on every Sartori page covering that city, because it is one research programme rather than a per-page estimate.

How often is the research refreshed?

The market map is maintained continuously. The survey runs quarterly and has done since 2019. Mandate telemetry updates as files close, and city pages are revised when the underlying market data moves — each page carries the month it was last updated.

Do you publish the raw data?

No. Interview and mandate records are confidential to the candidates and clients who gave them, and are reported only in aggregate. What we publish are the aggregate findings, the cohort sizes behind them and the period they cover.

05 Market pages

Where these figures are published.

Every market page below reports from this programme. 1,086 pages across 68 markets — open a market to see what we publish for it.

Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates7 pages
Amsterdam, Netherlands14 pages
Antwerp, Belgium3 pages
Atlanta, Georgia37 pages
Austin, Texas37 pages
Baltimore, Maryland38 pages
Barcelona, Spain2 pages
Bologna, Italy3 pages
Boston, Massachusetts44 pages
Brussels, Belgium7 pages
Charlotte, North Carolina38 pages
Chicago, Illinois42 pages
Cologne, Germany1 pages
Columbus, Ohio3 pages
Dallas, Texas42 pages
Denver, Colorado42 pages
Detroit, Michigan1 pages
Dubai, United Arab Emirates4 pages
Dublin, Ireland2 pages
Düsseldorf, Germany5 pages
Frankfurt, Germany6 pages
Hartford, Connecticut1 pages
Hong Kong, Hong Kong12 pages
Houston, Texas42 pages
Indianapolis, Indiana1 pages
London, United Kingdom17 pages
Los Angeles, California43 pages
Louisville, Kentucky2 pages
Lyon, France1 pages
Madrid, Spain9 pages
Melbourne, Australia8 pages
Miami, Florida37 pages
Milan, Italy6 pages
Milwaukee, Wisconsin1 pages
Minneapolis, Minnesota38 pages
Munich, Germany9 pages
Naples, Italy2 pages
Nashville, Tennessee3 pages
New York, New York51 pages
Northern Virginia, Virginia17 pages
Paris, France11 pages
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania35 pages
Phoenix, Arizona39 pages
Portland, Oregon9 pages
Providence, Rhode Island1 pages
Raleigh, North Carolina1 pages
Richmond, Virginia3 pages
Riga, Latvia1 pages
Riyadh, Saudi Arabia13 pages
Rome, Italy8 pages
Rotterdam, Netherlands4 pages
Salt Lake City, Utah3 pages
San Antonio, Texas1 pages
San Diego, California39 pages
San Francisco, California40 pages
Santa Clara, California9 pages
Seattle, Washington53 pages
Singapore, Singapore26 pages
Stuttgart, Germany4 pages
Sydney, Australia10 pages
Tallinn, Estonia3 pages
Tampa, Florida36 pages
The Hague, Netherlands1 pages
Tokyo, Japan9 pages
Turin, Italy1 pages
Vilnius, Lithuania5 pages
Washington, District of Columbia41 pages
West Palm Beach, Florida2 pages

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