Law firms · White-collar & investigations

White-collar and investigations lateral partners, hired on the book that can clear

Managing partners hire this practice when the docket changes shape. We underwrite the matters that can actually move, the conflicts that kill them, and the guarantee that should survive a quieter year.

Brief us on this practice Talk through a mandate

01 The mandate

Lorenzo Sartori — Founder, Sartori & Partners Published September 30, 2026 — Who law firms hire for a government-investigations lateral, and what book and guarantee can be underwritten

A white collar and investigations lateral partner recruiter moves a partner into a law firm's government-investigations or white-collar defense group. The DOJ Criminal Division named 10 priorities on 12 May 2025. Executive Order 14209 paused new FCPA cases for 180 days from 10 February 2025. Cornerstone Research said on 19 November 2025 that SEC public-company actions fell 30 percent in FY 2025. Of Sartori & Partners' 2,600+ partner conversations since 2017, 7 were searches in this practice. An Am Law 100 investigations chair in Washington received a shortlist in 28 days and an accepted offer in week 14.

The practice moves when the docket moves. The book often does not.

Sartori & Partners runs retained searches for law firms hiring a white-collar defense or government-investigations partner. The buyer is the managing partner, the litigation chair, or the practice head who will sign the guarantee.

A white-collar book is a history of matters, not an annuity of clients. The partner may have tried cases, run internal investigations, or sat across from the Department of Justice, the Securities and Exchange Commission, a state attorney general, or a monitor. The client who would “follow” is often a company that cannot be seen choosing counsel in public, and that may already be adverse to a client of the firm that wants to hire.

The general lateral method, including the questionnaire and the first hundred days, is on lateral partner recruiting. What changes for this practice is which firms hire, what a typical book looks like, how guarantees fail, and which covenants actually constrain a lawyer.

Partners weighing a move of their own can read the partner-side advisory. The 2026 enforcement picture, written for general counsel, is white-collar demand and the enforcement docket.

02 Who hires

The firms that staff this bench are the firms that hire into it.

Demand did not disappear when case counts fell. It changed address: different agencies, different statutes, and a shorter list of matters a firm can actually open.

30%: fewer SEC enforcement actions against public companies and subsidiaries in FY 2025 than in FY 2024.; Cornerstone Research and NYU Pollack Center, 19 November 2025
10: priority areas named by the DOJ Criminal Division for white-collar enforcement.; Matthew R. Galeotti remarks, 12 May 2025
$3.59m: profits per equity partner across the Am Law 100 for calendar 2025, up 14.0 percent.; 2026 Am Law 100, via David Lat, 30 April 2026
7.4%: increase in worked rates at US law firms in 2025, against 2.8 percent inflation.; Thomson Reuters Institute, Law Firm Rates Report 2026 (20 October 2025)

On 12 May 2025 the head of the DOJ Criminal Division, Matthew R. Galeotti, named 10 priority areas: waste and fraud, including health-care fraud; trade and customs fraud, including tariff evasion; market manipulation tied to Chinese-affiliated issuers; investment fraud aimed at households; sanctions and conduct tied to cartels and foreign terrorist organizations; material support to those organizations; money laundering tied to illegal drug manufacture; unlawful opioid distribution; bribery that affects US national interests; and digital assets used in crime. The same revision lets a company that receives an internal whistleblower report self-report to the DOJ within 120 days and still seek a declination. That 120-day clock is internal-investigation work even when a new criminal case is never filed.

Executive Order 14209, issued 10 February 2025, directed a 180-day review of FCPA guidelines and told the Department to stop opening new FCPA investigations unless the Attorney General made an exception. The order allowed one further 180-day extension. The pause did not last as the operating rule. On 9 June 2025 Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche issued guidelines that resumed FCPA enforcement and required authorization from the Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division, or someone more senior, before a new FCPA investigation. Jones Day, writing on the Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance on 25 June 2025, noted that the UK Serious Fraud Office, France's Parquet National Financier, and Switzerland's Office of the Attorney General had stood up an anti-corruption task force. US firms with a London or Paris investigations bench still hire for that work.

The SEC side of the same year is a smaller filed docket, not a closed one. Cornerstone Research and the NYU Pollack Center for Law & Business reported on 19 November 2025, from data through 14 November, that the SEC brought 30 percent fewer enforcement actions against public companies and subsidiaries in FY 2025 than in FY 2024. Outgoing Chair Gary Gensler oversaw 52 of those actions, 93 percent. Four were initiated after he left. Cooperation was noted for 73 percent of the public-company and subsidiary defendants that settled, against a 65 percent average from FY 2016 through FY 2024. Companies are still investigating and still settling. They are not producing the old volume of new public-company cases.

Where the chairs sit

Chambers' New York table for Litigation: White-Collar Crime & Government Investigations: The Elite, consulted in 2026, places 10 firms in Band 1, each shown as ranked for 6 years:

Akin
Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton
Davis Polk & Wardwell
Debevoise & Plimpton
Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher
Latham & Watkins
Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison
Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom
Sullivan & Cromwell
WilmerHale

Those 10 are standing benches. They hire when a priority on the May 2025 list, such as tariffs, cartels, digital assets, or sanctions, is not covered by the partners already there, or when a rainmaker's matters cannot be staffed after a departure. They are not the only buyers.

Firms newer to the same table are still building the practice, which is the usual reason to buy a lateral rather than wait for a promotion. King & Spalding is in Band 3 with 3 years on the table. Cooley and Kirkland & Ellis are in Band 4 with 3 years. Paul Hastings is in Band 4 with 2 years. O'Melveny & Myers and Steptoe are in Band 5 with 2 years. A specialist boutique sits in the middle of the same table: Kobre & Kim is Band 2, ranked for 6 years, and is the kind of shop that both hires cross-border investigations partners and loses them to full-service platforms whose conflicts profile is the point of the move.

The UK-heritage US offices are already on the table and hire US partners to sit next to European anti-corruption work. A&O Shearman, Clifford Chance US, and Freshfields US are each in Band 3, each shown as ranked for 6 years. Washington remains the other center of the practice, because that is where Main Justice, the SEC, and congressional inquiries sit. A New York Band 1 ranking does not staff a Washington hearing.

03 Book size

A typical investigations book is a median, plus a tail the median hides.

Use the disputes band as the base. Then ask which matters in the tail the hiring firm is allowed to open.

Episodic, not annuity

A corporate book can renew. An investigations book is a matter, a monitor, or a trial. It does not pay the same amount in a quiet enforcement year as in a peak year.

Who the client calls

The portable piece is the general counsel who has hired this lawyer before. Hours on a matter staffed by the old firm are not that relationship.

Conflicts as the real gate

The firm that wants the partner may be the firm that cannot open the partner's two largest matters. That is a book problem, not a paperwork problem.

Rate is not collections

Worked rates rose 7.4 percent in 2025 (Thomson Reuters Institute, 20 October 2025) while the SEC's public-company docket fell. A higher rate card does not replace matters the firm cannot staff.

Across 2,600+ partner conversations since 2017, the published practice split puts the disputes and litigation median near $2.15 million. One disputes partner managing multi-jurisdictional regulatory investigations reported a book from $10 million to $37 million. The full spread, including sample sizes, is on partner book of business by practice. The median is what a compensation committee should treat as ordinary. The investigations range above it is a tail, not a target.

That median has to be read against what equity partners already earn. David Lat, citing the 2026 Am Law 100 on 30 April 2026, reported profits per equity partner of $3.59 million for calendar 2025, up 14.0 percent, and revenue per lawyer of $1.39 million, up 8.7 percent. Am Law 100 attorney headcount was 128,868, up 4 percent. Nonequity partner headcount rose by almost 7 percent. Equity partner headcount rose by 2 percent. The profit pool got larger. The equity gate got tighter. A white-collar lateral pitched as equity is being asked to clear a slower-growing tier, with a book at that disputes median, not at the profits-per-partner figure.

Do not convert the rate card into a book. The Thomson Reuters Institute, in the Law Firm Rates Report 2026 released 20 October 2025, found worked rates up 7.4 percent in 2025 against 2.8 percent inflation, from reported results of 195 US law firms. Rates rose in a year when Cornerstone's public-company SEC count fell 30 percent. Collections for this practice follow matters and conflicts, not the percentage on the rate sheet.

A defensible pitch separates trailing collections the partner originated, the share a new firm can clear, and the share that was one monitor or one trial. The general lateral page is where originated-versus-worked and client loyalty are set out for every practice. Here the loyalty test is narrower. It is whether a general counsel has hired this lawyer when the company was in trouble, and whether that company is a client the new firm can accept.

04 Guarantees

The guarantee fails when it is priced on a year the docket will not repeat.

Two or three years is the window in which a guarantee either becomes a book or becomes a departure.

I
Step 01 — Conflicts
Clear the matter map before a name moves.

An investigations partner's book is a set of open and recent matters, often adverse to companies a full-service firm already represents. The search starts with a conflicts screen described at the matter-type level, not with a circulated biography.
- The candidate describes matters in general terms — a public-company accounting inquiry, a cartel defense, a monitorship — so clearance can start without a privilege waiver.
- A conflict with one institutional client can zero the only relationship that made the guarantee plausible. That read happens before outreach widens.
II
Step 02 — Matter history
Underwrite matters the general counsel hired, not a client list that will not sign.

A company under investigation will not write a portability letter. The substitute record is which general counsel hired this partner on prior matters, over several years, net of matters the new firm cannot open.
- Staffing credit is separated from origination. An investigations partner who tried the case may not be the lawyer the client calls next.
- Concentration is the risk: a book that is a handful of general counsel, one of whom the firm cannot clear, is not the number in the pitch.
III
Step 03 — Covenants
Read notice, non-solicit, and capital return. Do not draft a non-compete.

D.C. Rule 5.6(a), as amended by court order of 14 May 2025 and effective 15 September 2025, bars an agreement that restricts a lawyer's right to practice after the relationship ends, except an agreement about retirement benefits. Comment [2] warns that a substantial financial penalty on a lawyer who competes may itself violate the rule.
- The documents that change the start date are notice, a client non-solicit, and the partnership's capital-return schedule.
- The same rule is why a forfeiture clause dressed up as a non-compete is a compensation problem, not a way to keep the book behind.
IV
Step 04 — Guarantee
Set the guarantee to the docket that survives, then integrate the practice.

David Lat, writing on 30 April 2026 about the 2026 Am Law 100, noted that some expensive laterals leave after two or three years because guaranteed compensation ended and pay was about to be reset to the book. In this practice the reset arrives faster when the docket that funded the pitch year has already shrunk.
- Cornerstone Research reported on 19 November 2025 that FY 2025 monetary settlements against public companies and subsidiaries were $808 million, the lowest transition-year total in its SEED database, and that disgorgement and prejudgment interest were $108 million, the lowest year in that database.
- The offer tracks trailing collections on matters the new firm can actually open, not the partner's best FCPA or monitor year.

Lat's observation is about laterals generally, not a white-collar survey. It matches the shape of this docket. FY 2025 public-company monetary settlements were $808 million and disgorgement plus prejudgment interest was $108 million (Cornerstone Research, 19 November 2025). A guarantee copied from a 2023 or 2024 monitor year is a bet that those totals return. The hiring firm should not make that bet in the offer letter.

05 Non-competes and other constraints

The non-compete is the document that does not do the work.

Lawyer ethics rules bar the clause corporate buyers expect. Notice, non-solicit, capital, and conflicts are what delay the book.

D.C. Rule of Professional Conduct 5.6(a) says a lawyer shall not participate in offering or making a partnership, shareholders, operating, employment, or similar agreement that restricts the right to practice after the relationship ends, except an agreement concerning benefits upon retirement. The D.C. Court of Appeals adopted amendments touching Rule 5.6 on 14 May 2025. They took effect on 15 September 2025. Comment [2] is the sentence compensation committees miss: restrictions other than retirement benefits that impose a substantial financial penalty on a lawyer who competes after leaving may violate the rule.

A New York or Washington investigations lateral is hired into a bar that follows this model. Writing a geographic non-compete into the partnership agreement does not keep the practice behind. It creates an ethics problem for the lawyers who offered it. The clauses that change the calendar are narrower, and they are enforceable only to the extent they are not a non-compete in disguise.

Notice. The partnership can require a notice period. It cannot use that period as a ban on practicing law.
Client non-solicit. These usually bite harder than a blanket ban, and they are the clause to read before a start date is promised to a client.
Capital return. A slow payout of capital is a cash-flow fact. A forfeiture triggered only because the lawyer competes is the penalty Comment [2] flags.
Conflicts. The matter the partner wants to bring may be adverse to a client the firm will not drop. No covenant creates that bar. The conflicts check does.

Retirement-benefit provisions are the exception the rule writes down. Whether a forfeiture clause qualifies as a retirement provision is a facts question, not a label in the agreement. For a lateral in mid-career, it usually does not. Treat the economics of departure as compensation, and treat the practice as free to move, subject to notice and to conflicts.

Cross-border partners do not get a different US rule because their old firm is in London. Once the lawyer is practicing in a US office, the US rule on restrictions is the one the hiring agreement has to satisfy. European anti-corruption work can still be the reason for the hire, which is why A&O Shearman, Clifford Chance US, and Freshfields US appear on the New York table. The covenant analysis for the US seat is still Rule 5.6.

06 How this search is run

Conflicts first. The guarantee last.

The five-phase lateral method is unchanged and lives on the general partner page. Conflicts, matter history, and the guarantee are the gates added for investigations.

Sartori & Partners has held 2,600+ partner conversations since 2017. Inside that set, 7 were white-collar and investigations partner searches. 2 of those 7 did not reach an accepted offer, because a conflict with an existing client removed the book the firm had wanted. That is the ordinary failure mode in this practice, and it is why the conflicts screen is step one rather than a closing condition.

On one of the searches that did close, an Am Law 100 investigations chair in Washington hired a former Assistant U.S. Attorney. The shortlist was delivered in 28 days. The accepted offer came in week 14. Those two figures are that search. They are not a median for every lateral, and they are not the in-house general-counsel clock.

The market map behind the outreach covers 1,480,000+ lawyers. Every partner mandate is retained. A contingent process does not pay for a conflicts read that may kill the search before a shortlist exists. The questionnaire, the portability test, and the integration plan are on lateral partner recruiting. The investigations-specific gates are conflicts, matter history, and the guarantee.

A practice head who wants the enforcement numbers behind a 2026 brief, including how in-house investigations seats are being specified, should read why white-collar demand is tracking enforcement. The dollar bands used above are the practice split on book of business by practice.

07 Related

The general search, the book, and the docket.

Portability method, the practice split, and the enforcement piece each have their own URL.

Lateral partner recruiting

The firm-side method for any practice: portability, the questionnaire, conflicts, covenants, and the first hundred days.

Read the general lateral search

Book of business by practice

Disputes medians and the investigations tail, from the partner-conversation set, with the sample behind each band.

See books by practice

White-collar demand in 2026

The enforcement docket general counsel are staffing against, which is the demand this lateral is hired to meet.

Read the enforcement piece

The firm-side hub is for law firms. A partner exploring the move, rather than hiring one, should start at partners.

What practice heads ask before they open this search

Who hires a white collar and investigations lateral partner recruiter?

Chambers' 2026 New York elite table places 10 firms in Band 1, and those platforms hire. The table is Litigation: White-Collar Crime & Government Investigations: The Elite. Firms newer to that table, and the specialist boutiques on it, hire as well. The shared lateral method sits on lateral partner recruiting.

What book of business actually moves with a white-collar partner?

In the published disputes sample the USD median is about 2.15 million dollars, and a reported investigations book ran from 10 million to 37 million dollars. Those bands come from Sartori & Partners' partner conversations and are set out on book of business by practice. A company in an open inquiry will not sign a portability letter. The underwriting file is prior matters the general counsel hired this lawyer to handle, minus anything the new firm cannot clear.

How long does a compensation guarantee last on this lateral?

Some laterals leave after two or three years, when the guarantee ends and pay is reset to the book. David Lat recorded that pattern on 30 April 2026, discussing the 2026 Am Law 100. Am Law 100 profits per equity partner were $3.59 million for calendar 2025, up 14.0 percent. A white-collar guarantee written on a peak monitor or FCPA year is the one that breaks when settlements shrink: Cornerstone Research put FY 2025 public-company monetary settlements at $808 million.

Can the hiring firm enforce a non-compete against the partner?

D.C. Rule 5.6(a) bars a non-compete that restricts practice after departure, except retirement benefits, under amendments effective 15 September 2025. The D.C. Court of Appeals adopted the amendments on 14 May 2025. Comment [2] says a substantial financial penalty on a lawyer who competes may violate the rule. What moves the start date is notice, a client non-solicit, and when capital is returned.

Why did SEC case counts fall while firms still hire investigations partners?

Public-company SEC actions fell 30 percent in FY 2025, and 52 of them — 93 percent — were filed before the administration change. Cornerstone Research and the NYU Pollack Center reported that on 19 November 2025, with only 4 actions after Chair Gensler left. The DOJ, on 12 May 2025, pointed prosecutors at 10 priority areas and gave companies 120 days from an internal whistleblower report to self-report and still seek a declination. Fewer filed cases is not the same thing as less investigative work.

How is this search different from a general lateral partner search?

Of 2,600+ partner conversations since 2017, 7 were white-collar and investigations partner searches, and 2 of those 7 stopped on conflicts. The general search — portability model, questionnaire, and integration — is lateral partner recruiting. This mandate adds a conflicts screen and a matter history before anyone discusses a guarantee. On one search, an Am Law 100 investigations chair in Washington received a shortlist in 28 days and an accepted offer in week 14 for a former Assistant U.S. Attorney.

Every market

Where the lateral partner search runs.

City pages cover the lateral partner bench, including investigations, in that market. The practice gates above apply in each of them.

Lateral partner recruiting149 pages

Atlanta

Austin

Baltimore

Boston

Charlotte

Chicago

Dallas

Denver

Houston

Kansas City

Overview

Las Vegas

Overview

Los Angeles

Miami

Minneapolis

New Orleans

Overview

New York

Newark

Overview

Orlando

Overview

Philadelphia

Phoenix

Pittsburgh

Overview

San Diego

San Francisco

Seattle

St. Louis

Overview

Sydney

Overview

Tampa

Tel Aviv

Overview

Washington

A brief, not a circulating list

Tell us the matter types you can clear. We will map who can fill them.

Brief the gap — a missing statute, a Washington presence, a conflict that blocks a client. We run the conflicts screen and the matter history before a guarantee is drafted. Retained, and limited to the practice you named.