Real estate lateral partner recruiting

The lower median is structural. Practices built on large single mandates — a fund close, a major arbitration — produce higher books because one or two relationships are the revenue. Real estate, like employment and mid-market corporate, is a run of smaller mandates. The same published note is why the range is tighter than disputes, and why it is still not tight: $0.1 million and $14 million are both real estate.

Portability is the number that should change the offer. Highly portable means the book largely follows the lawyer. That was 32 percent of the 40 assessed real estate reads. Partially portable, 50 percent, means a share follows if someone works the relationship. Low portability, 18 percent, means the book is substantially institutional or panel-driven. The three shares sum to 100 percent, and the published table shows no institutional classification in this practice. A chair who underwrites the headline book is pricing the 32 percent case against a sample that is mostly the other two.

What usually moves is the sponsor who instructs this lawyer, the leasing roster that is personal, and the repeat developer. What usually stays is the fund mandate, the REIT panel and the institutional lender that hired the firm. That split is why real estate sits with corporate on partial portability and not with insurance, where 52 percent of the assessed sample was highly portable. Full rows, including every other practice: partner book of business by practice.

ABA Model Rule 5.6(a) provides that a lawyer shall not participate in offering or making a partnership, shareholders, operating, employment, or other similar agreement that restricts the right of a lawyer to practice after termination of the relationship, except an agreement concerning benefits upon retirement. Rule 5.6(b) bars an agreement in which a restriction on the right to practice is part of the settlement of a client controversy. A blanket non-compete, of the kind a fund or a developer might sign with an executive, is not available against the partner you are hiring.

The retirement-benefits exception is narrow. A forfeiture drafted so that the lawyer cannot afford to practice is the thing the rule prohibits, dressed as a pension. What firms actually use, and what we read before a start date is put in a letter, is notice, garden leave while the lawyer remains a partner and is paid, and a non-solicit of clients that does not prohibit practice. Those terms change timing. They do not move a REIT panel.

The FTC’s Non-Compete Clause Rule does not fill the gap. A federal court in Texas set the rule aside in Ryan LLC v. FTC, 746 F. Supp. 3d 369 (N.D. Tex. 2024). On 5 September 2025 the Commission voted to dismiss its appeals and accede to that vacatur. The rule is not in effect. It was never the rule that governs a law-firm partnership agreement. State employee non-compete statutes can still matter for business-staff covenants around a group move. They do not license a partnership to do what Rule 5.6 forbids.

Real estate makes the ethics point concrete. The client who will not move is often the client a non-solicit could not have delivered anyway: the fund, the REIT, the lender on the panel. The client who might move — the sponsor, the repeat developer — is reached by a lawful announcement after resignation, not by racing a covenant. Conflicts are the other gate. A general description is enough to start clearance (“a listed industrial REIT on a joint-venture program”) without putting a privileged file in the hiring firm’s hands. The mechanics of that clearance, and of garden leave as a planned bridge rather than dead time, are phase four and phase five of lateral partner recruiting.

The New York matter above is the shape of a file that cleared those four questions. Day 26 to a shortlist. Week 13 to an accepted offer. Claimed book $3.4 million, originated collections $2.1 million, guarantee on the originated figure. It is one of 11 real estate partner searches since 2017, and it is not one of the 3 that stopped when the originated share would not carry the ask.

Group moves are the same test, applied to shared clients. A real estate “team” is often a partner, a counsel who holds the lender relationship, and two associates who run closings. If the lender relationship is the firm’s panel seat, the headcount does not travel with the partner. We map that before anyone is approached. The method behind the mapping is the research and search method. Firm-side context for the rest of the partnership is for law firms.