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Law firm team moves · Group hiring

Team Lift-Out Recruiting for Law Firms

A law firm team move of three to twenty lawyers is a practice purchase. We underwrite the shared book, the conflicts, the notice period and the eighteen months after arrival before the partnership commits.

Brief us on a group mandate Team move or a single partner
Lorenzo Sartori — Founder, Sartori & Partners — A team lift-out is a group move of 3 to 20 lawyers, underwritten on economics, conflicts and the 18-month window

A team lift-out moves a group of 3 to 20 lawyers as one practice. Partner lateral hiring rose 17.8% in 2025, to 787 partner hires across 305 offices (NALP, May 2026). About 30-38% of lateral partners leave within five years (Decipher, via Above the Law, May 2026). Only about 70% of a stated book follows, then drops further over 18 months (ABA Law Practice, July-August 2025). Sartori maps 1,480,000+ lawyers (research programme, since 2019). Of seven published case studies, the firm-side file is one Houston energy partner, a single hire against about 340 mapped partners (May-June 2026).

01 The mandate

Group hiring is a practice purchase, not a headcount exercise.

Sartori & Partners runs retained searches for managing partners and practice chairs who want a working group, not a stack of solo laterals. The lawyers share clients, conflicts and a notice calendar. The underwriting has to share them too.

Use a team lift-out when the receiving bench cannot staff the work on day one, when more than one lawyer owns the relationships, or when a new office needs a group that already knows how to run a matter together. Use a single lateral when the book is personal and the platform already has the associates. Those are different instruments. Treating them as the same search is how guarantees get written on revenue that never arrives.

The work before any approach is mechanical. Define who is in the group and who is not. Split the book into originated, serviced and institutional. Read every agreement that governs notice and solicitation. Decide, in advance, what the client letter will say about who is leaving and who is staying. Then, and only then, talk to anyone.

A solo partner search is a different page: lateral partner recruiting. The decision between a group and one lawyer is team move versus an individual move.

02 The economics

The market already prices a single lateral as a risky asset.

A group does not get a kinder set of facts. It inherits the solo-lateral record and then adds shared credit, a wider conflicts surface and more people who can leak the process.

+17.8%
partner lateral hiring in 2025, across 787 partner hires reported by 305 offices.
NALP, May 2026 Bulletin+
30-38%
of lateral partners leave the hiring firm within five years.
Decipher, via Above the Law, May 2026
~70%
of a stated book follows the lawyer, with further drop-off over the next 18 months.
ABA Law Practice, July-August 2025
200-400%
of annual compensation: compiled cost of one failed lateral, counting fees, the guarantee and replacement.
Decipher, via Above the Law, May 2026

NALP's May 2026 Bulletin+ also records the shape of that 2025 market. Across the same 305 offices, total lateral hiring was 3,535 lawyers, up 16.4% on 2024, and partners were 22.3% of the hires. Partner hiring rose 88.7% at firms of 250 lawyers or fewer, and 10.1% at firms of more than 1,000. A group moving into a smaller platform is not the same integration problem as a group moving into a large one. NALP, May 2026

On failure, keep the definitions apart. The 30-38% figure is exits within five years. ABA Law Practice (July-August 2025) cites multiple studies for a wider result: 50-60% of lateral hires underperform or leave within five years. An ABA Journal report in February 2017, on Hugh A. Simons's review of 1,130 lateral hires at 100 high-profit firms, put the five-year exit rate at 47%, and the time to come up to speed and to recoup the cost at two to three years. Eighteen months is inside that recoup window, which is why a miss visible then is already expensive.

03 Anatomy of a group move

Six gates. None of them is optional on a team lift-out.

Each gate is a way a group hire fails if it is skipped. We run them in this order, for the hiring firm.

  1. I
    Phase 01 - Economics

    Price the book once. A group has three pots of revenue, not one.

    A solo lateral is underwritten on one partner's originated collections. A team lift-out mixes three pots: revenue the lead partner originated, revenue another lawyer in the group originated, and institutional work the group serviced but does not control. Paying every partner a guarantee against the same headline double-counts the practice.

    • Separate originated collections from billings a lawyer worked. Only the originated share is a defensible base for that lawyer's guarantee.
    • Map concentration before the floor is written. A group whose top client is most of the revenue is a different underwrite from a spread book.
    • ABA Law Practice (July-August 2025) reports that about 70% of a stated book follows, and that the business which does travel routinely drops off over the following 18 months.
  2. II
    Phase 02 - Conflicts

    Conflicts scale with headcount. Clear the group, not the rainmaker.

    One partner can be clean and the group still be unhirable. Associates carry matter history. A counsel may be adverse to a client the receiving firm cannot lose. The conflicts screen is run on every lawyer who would move, by general description, before any name is circulated inside the receiving partnership.

    • A matter described as a sector and a problem type is enough for a first clearance. Client names wait until both sides have a reason to exchange them.
    • If clearance kills one relationship, reprice the book that day. The guarantee cannot keep the number that clearance just removed.
    • The published firm-side file is a single Houston energy partner, not a group: about 340 energy partners in that metro, roughly 15% of 2,219 U.S. energy partners (Sartori market mapping, May-June 2026).
  3. III
    Phase 03 - Covenants

    Read notice, non-solicit and garden leave in the governing jurisdiction.

    A group does not share one clock. Partners, counsel and associates can sit on different notice periods, and a restriction that is a delay in New York can be a different instrument in England. The start date is written after those instruments are read, not before.

    • ABA Model Rule 5.6(a) bars a partnership or employment agreement that restricts a lawyer's right to practice after termination, except an agreement about retirement benefits.
    • New York City Bar Formal Opinion 2025-3 treats a financial penalty that discourages a move to a competitor as a Rule 5.6 problem. The test is the clause's real effect.
    • In February 2026 Freshfields ran its six-month notice for non-U.S. partners in full, rather than the three-month exit it had often allowed (Law.com, 23 February 2026).
  4. IV
    Phase 04 - Client notice

    The client chooses counsel. The letter has to say who is going and who is staying.

    ABA Formal Opinion 99-414 (8 September 1999) treats a joint letter as the preferred way to tell current clients that a lawyer is leaving: the fact of the departure, where the lawyer is going, and that the client decides who continues. On a group move the letter is false if it implies the whole practice is moving, or that nobody is.

    • Notice goes to current clients with whom the moving lawyers have a real professional relationship, not to the firm's whole client list.
    • Secret solicitation of those clients before resignation is a different act from the notice, and can breach fiduciary duty. Meehan v. Shaughnessy, 404 Mass. 419 (1989), is the usual citation.
    • New York City Bar Opinion 2023-1 permits departing partners to inform clients with whom they already have a professional relationship. It is not a license to recruit the associate bench in secret.
  5. V
    Phase 05 - Confidentiality

    One extra person is one extra path for the news to travel.

    A solo search leaks when someone talks. A team lift-out leaks when anyone in a circle of partners, counsel and associates talks. The process stays with one channel, names stay blind both ways until there is mutual interest, and no curriculum vitae moves without that lawyer's written consent.

    • Approach the partners who control the practice first. Associates are not recruited off the firm's data before anyone has resigned.
    • Gibbs v. Breed, Abbott & Morgan, 271 A.D.2d 180 (N.Y. App. Div. 2000), treats pre-departure recruiting of associates with the firm's confidential information as a breach.
    • In a mapped, concentrated market the cost of a rumor is concrete. Houston energy is about 633 practitioners, 13.5% of that city's mapped legal field (case study, May-June 2026).
  6. VI
    Phase 06 - Integration

    The hire is judged at month 18, not on the announcement.

    There is no public census of laterals who exit at month 18. Eighteen months is where the miss becomes visible: the clients who were going to follow have followed, the drop-off ABA Law Practice describes has had time to show, and a firm without an integration process sees 30-40% higher lateral attrition (ABA Law Practice, July-August 2025).

    • Name a partner sponsor and a staffing plan before the start date. A group that arrives without work assigned to the associates becomes a fortress practice.
    • Put origination-credit rules in writing. Shared credit that was sold as one partner's originations is how guarantees get overpaid.
    • The diagnosis of that window, and the choice between a group and a solo move, are written up separately and linked below.
04 Guarantees and sharing

A shared book can be guaranteed once.

ABA Law Practice (July-August 2025) describes the draw as a multi-year guarantee used to attract a lateral with a large book. It does not publish a standard term. The design problem on a group is allocation, not a slogan about culture.

01

Lead guarantee, salaried bench

One floor, written against the lead partner's own originated collections after a portability haircut. Associates and counsel move on salary, with a named staffing plan. Use this when one relationship owns the work and the others service it.

02

Several guarantees, no double count

Each partner's floor is capped at that lawyer's own originated book. Overlap clients are assigned to one originator in the underwriting, even if two partners know the general counsel. The partnership does not guarantee the same dollar twice.

03

A collections pool

A group floor that pays only if combined collections clear a number the committee can defend. Individual draws sit underneath it. This fits a practice where credit is genuinely shared and no single partner's LPQ tells the truth alone.

04

What we will not price

Institutional panel work, rate-card relationships, and matters that stay because of a conflict the receiving firm cannot clear. Those dollars can be in a pitch. They are not in the guarantee.

Recruiting, onboarding and integrating one lateral can exceed $1 million before the guarantee is paying (ABA Law Practice, July-August 2025). A failed lateral is compiled at 200-400% of that lawyer's annual compensation once fees, guarantees and replacement are counted (Decipher, via Above the Law, May 2026). A group repeats those costs across more lawyers. Overlap in the book does not remove them. The engagement itself is retained: the fee is 25-30% of first-year total compensation, and 30% of that fee is paid at engagement and kept if the client cancels.

05 Non-solicit and garden leave

The clause that matters is the one that changes the start date.

Non-solicit, notice and garden leave are not one doctrine. They answer different questions, and they answer them differently in New York and in England.

Question United States England and Wales
Right to practice Model Rule 5.6(a) bars an agreement that restricts practice after departure, except retirement benefits. A client non-solicit that functions as a ban on practicing is the same problem. Post-termination restraints are a contract question, enforceable only so far as they protect a legitimate interest and go no further than is reasonable. Read the partnership deed, not a U.S. memo.
Financial penalties New York City Bar Formal Opinion 2025-3: a penalty that discourages a move to a competitor contravenes Rule 5.6 if that is its effect. Solis (NALSC, Winter 2026) puts California, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin in a minority that has allowed some competition-tied disincentives. Forfeiture and garden leave are drafted into the deed. Do not assume a New York ethics opinion answers an English partnership dispute.
Notice and garden leave Notice is whatever the agreement says. A long paid sit-out that blocks clients from following can itself be attacked under Rule 5.6. There is no national partner garden-leave statute to cite. Law.com, 23 February 2026: Freshfields applied a contractual six-month notice to non-U.S. partners, instead of the three-month exit it had often permitted. Garden leave is how European firms commonly spend that notice.
Associates Partners may plan a departure. Recruiting associates beforehand, using the firm's information, is the breach in Gibbs v. Breed (N.Y. App. Div. 2000). People move of their own will. The same free-will point holds. A pitch that “the team is coming,” made before resignations, is how a group move becomes an injunction application.

Have conflicts counsel read the actual deeds. A recruiting firm can sequence the resignation, the letter and the start date. It does not replace an opinion in the governing jurisdiction. Cross-border groups are read lawyer by lawyer. Sartori & Partners was founded in 2017 and works across the United States, the European Union and the Gulf; the legal test still belongs to the jurisdiction on the agreement.

06 The 12-to-18-month window

Month 18 is when a group hire is either a practice or a write-off.

Five-year attrition is the autopsy. The operating window is shorter, and it is the same window whether one partner moved or twelve.

What should be true at month 12

  • Conflicts are cleared and time is being recorded on the new platform, not on a side arrangement.
  • Collections are tracking a haircut case, not the pitch. The haircut starts from about 70% of a stated book (ABA Law Practice, July-August 2025), then takes the further drop-off that article calls routine.
  • Origination credit is written down. Two partners are not both “the” originator of the same client.
  • The associates who moved have matters. A bench that sits idle for a year will not be there at month 18.

What month 18 decides

  • The clients who were going to move have moved. What is left is the loyalty that stayed at the old firm.
  • If the guarantee is still paying and the conservative case is not in sight, the partnership is funding a miss. The Simons review put full recoup at two to three years (ABA Journal, February 2017).
  • Integration is either a system or a hope. Firms without a process see 30-40% higher lateral attrition (ABA Law Practice, July-August 2025).
  • Passle's 2026 survey of 100 managing partners and business-development leads, reported by Above the Law in May 2026, found that firms satisfied with growth most often named internal and external networking (61%) as the sign a lateral had actually joined. Only 41% of partners in that research thought colleagues understood their work.

Two companion notes carry the detail we will not repeat here. Why lateral partner hires fail after 18 months is the diagnostic window. Team move versus an individual move is the choice of instrument. A group that fails does so for the solo reasons, plus shared credit and a bench that was promised and did not arrive.

07 Timing and confidentiality

Sequence the move. Do not announce a team that has not resigned.

We do not publish a median time-to-offer for group moves. The clocks that are public are the ones below, and they are not interchangeable.

  1. i.

    Map the group before any call

    The research programme behind that map has run since 2019 and holds 1,480,000+ lawyer profiles. Findings are typically reported on a window of 12 to 36 months. In markets under 10,000 mapped lawyers the published interview cohort is at least 250. New York's published cohort is 1,675 structured interviews. Those are coverage figures, not a count of team mandates. The research programme states the method.

  2. ii.

    Read covenants before you pick a Monday

    A U.S. agreement may allow a short contractual notice. An English deed may not. The February 2026 Freshfields report is a six-month notice, enforced, against a prior practice of letting non-U.S. partners leave at three months. A start date that ignores the longer clock produces a group that is half arrived and half still on garden leave.

  3. iii.

    One channel until mutual interest

    Names and the hiring firm's strategy stay inside the mandate until both sides want to continue. Written consent comes before any curriculum vitae moves. Associates hear about a move from a process, after the partners who own the practice are in it, and they decide for themselves. The Houston file is the published illustration of why the channel matters: one energy partner, hired quietly, in a metro of about 340 energy partners where the field talks (May-June 2026). The outcome in that file is qualitative. It was one hire, and it stayed. It is not a group statistic.

  4. iv.

    Notice, then the letter, then the work

    Resignation, the joint client letter, conflicts waivers and the first matters are one sequence. ABA Formal Opinion 99-414 is the U.S. reference for the letter. The letter on a group move lists the lawyers who are leaving and the lawyers who are not, and it tells the client the choice is theirs. Billing starts when clearance says it can, not when the press note is ready.

Firms whose lateral success rate exceeds 70% tend to hire into a defined strategic gap rather than to buy revenue that happens to be available (ABA Law Practice, July-August 2025). A team lift-out that exists because a group is “on the market” fails that test. A team lift-out that fills a sector, a city or a conflicts hole the firm has already named can pass it.

08 Related firm-side work

The group sits next to the solo search, not instead of it.

Same retained standard. Different instrument. Choose with the book and the bench in view.

Lateral partner recruiting

One partner, underwritten on portable originations, conflicts and the first 100 days.

Solo lateral search

Associate recruiting

The bench a group needs if it does not bring its own. Class year, matter depth, conflicts.

Associate recruiting

For law firms

How retained firm-side search is engaged, from the brief through integration.

Firm-side search

The seven published case studies are indexed at case studies. Six are company mandates. The firm-side file is the Houston energy partner search.

What managing partners ask before they hire a group

What is a team lift-out, as distinct from hiring three laterals?

A team lift-out, also called a law firm team move or group hiring, is one practice moving together: typically three to twenty lawyers, partners plus the counsel and associates who do the work. Three solo searches do not share clients, conflicts, notice dates or credit. A group does. The choice between the two instruments is set out in team move versus an individual move.

How should a partnership share guarantees across a moving group?

Price each dollar once. Cap any individual floor at that lawyer's own originated collections after a portability haircut, or use a single pool that pays only if group collections clear a defended floor. ABA Law Practice (July-August 2025) reports that about 70% of a stated book follows and that even that slice routinely drops off over the next 18 months. A guarantee written on the uncut pitch, and then again for a second partner, is how the floor outruns the revenue.

Are client non-solicits and garden leave enforceable against lawyers?

It depends on the jurisdiction and on the effect of the clause, not on its label. ABA Model Rule 5.6(a) prohibits an agreement that restricts a lawyer's right to practice after termination, except for retirement benefits. New York City Bar Formal Opinion 2025-3 (2025) says a financial penalty that discourages a move to a competitor fails that rule if that is its real effect. A Winter 2026 note by Tina B. Solis of Nixon Peabody, published by NALSC, records the majority view to the same effect, and a minority — including California, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — that has permitted certain competition-tied financial disincentives. In England and Wales, notice is a contract term firms do enforce: Law.com reported on 23 February 2026 that Freshfields was running a six-month notice for non-U.S. partners rather than the three-month exit it had often allowed. This is not legal advice. Have the agreements read in the governing law before you write a start date.

Who is allowed to tell the clients?

The client chooses counsel. ABA Formal Opinion 99-414 (8 September 1999) prefers a joint letter from the firm and the departing lawyer to current clients, stating the departure and the client's choice. New York City Bar Opinion 2023-1 (June 2023) allows departing partners to inform clients with whom they already have a professional relationship. Secret solicitation before resignation can still breach fiduciary duty. Meehan v. Shaughnessy, 404 Mass. 419 (1989). On a group move the letter has to identify who is leaving and who is staying.

Why do group moves break between month 12 and month 18?

No public source publishes an 18-month exit rate, and we do not invent one. The published attrition figures are five-year windows: 30-38% of lateral partners leave within five years (Decipher, via Above the Law, May 2026), and multiple studies put underperformance or exit at 50-60% within five years (ABA Law Practice, July-August 2025). Eighteen months is when the book that was going to move has moved, the further drop-off has had time to show, and integration has either happened or it has not. Firms without an integration process see 30-40% higher lateral attrition (same ABA article). The operating checklist is in why lateral partner hires fail after 18 months.

How is a group search kept confidential?

One channel. The receiving firm's strategy and the lawyers' names stay undisclosed until there is mutual interest. No curriculum vitae leaves us without that lawyer's written consent. Partners who control the practice are approached before anyone talks to associates. Pre-departure recruiting of associates with the current firm's information is the fact pattern in Gibbs v. Breed, Abbott & Morgan, 271 A.D.2d 180 (N.Y. App. Div. 2000). A group chat is not a process.

When is one lateral the better instrument?

When the market is partner-led and the book is personal. The only firm-side file among the seven published case studies is a confidential Houston energy partner search, run as a single equity-track hire. In that mapping (May-June 2026) Houston energy has about 0.65 associates per partner, against 0.91 across all Houston practices, and about 340 energy partners. Adding depth there meant winning one partner. A lift-out is the other instrument: use it when the receiving bench cannot staff the work. Read the file at the Houston energy case study and the decision guide on team move versus individual move.

How is the engagement priced?

Retained only, as with every search. The fee is 25-30% of first-year total compensation. Thirty percent of the fee is paid as a retainer at engagement and kept if the client cancels. We do not run group moves on contingency. Brief the practice at contact. Solo laterals sit on lateral partner recruiting.

Every market

Where lateral and group searches run.

Group moves are run in the same markets as lateral partner search. Open a market for the local bench and the hiring pattern.

Lateral partner recruiting140 pages

Atlanta

Austin

Baltimore

Boston

Charlotte

Chicago

Dallas

Denver

Houston

Los Angeles

Miami

Minneapolis

New York

Philadelphia

Phoenix

San Diego

San Francisco

Seattle

Tampa

Washington

A brief, not a commitment

A group is a larger bet. Underwrite it as one practice.

Tell us the sector, the city and the gap. We map the group, separate the book, read the covenants, and sequence notice and integration through the eighteen months that decide it. Retained, and confidential until both sides agree to go further.

Brief us on a group mandate Why hires fail after 18 months

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