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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 20 US markets published below, the interview cohorts alone total 8,325 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, New York 67,000 1,675
Washington, District of Columbia 52,000 1,300
Los Angeles, California 23,000 575
Dallas, Texas 20,000 500
San Francisco, California 14,000 350
Chicago, Illinois 13,000 325
Atlanta, Georgia 12,000 300
Houston, Texas 11,000 275
San Diego, California 11,000 275
Miami, Florida 10,000 250
Seattle, Washington 8,500 250
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 7,500 250
Austin, Texas 7,000 250
Baltimore, Maryland 6,500 250
Minneapolis, Minnesota 6,000 250
Denver, Colorado 5,000 250
Phoenix, Arizona 5,000 250
Tampa, Florida 5,000 250
Charlotte, North Carolina 4,000 250
Boston, Massachusetts 3,500 250
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.

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. 680 pages across 20 markets — open a market to see what we publish for it.

Atlanta, Georgia34 pages
Austin, Texas34 pages
Baltimore, Maryland34 pages
Boston, Massachusetts34 pages
Charlotte, North Carolina34 pages
Chicago, Illinois34 pages
Dallas, Texas34 pages
Denver, Colorado34 pages
Houston, Texas34 pages
Los Angeles, California34 pages
Miami, Florida34 pages
Minneapolis, Minnesota34 pages
New York, New York34 pages
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania34 pages
Phoenix, Arizona34 pages
San Diego, California34 pages
San Francisco, California34 pages
Seattle, Washington34 pages
Tampa, Florida34 pages
Washington, District of Columbia34 pages

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