LEADERSHIP

Lateral activity has not followed the usual late-year slowdown. Reporting through the autumn of 2026 shows firms continuing to hire partners into the fourth quarter, with a number of them now prepared to cover forfeited compensation or other breakage in order to complete a move. At the same time, roughly a quarter of firm-to-firm laterals in the Am Law 200 in the first half of the year arrived as part of a group of three or more lawyers. The combination means practice leaders are making capacity decisions under tighter timelines and with less margin for a slow start.

The practical difficulty is that the economics of a hire are usually judged on the business case presented at the point of offer, while the outcome depends on what happens in the following months. Industry analyses repeatedly find that a large minority of lateral partners leave within five years and that a still larger share fail to deliver the collections originally projected. One recurring gap is client follow-through: partners often indicate that a majority of their relationships will move, yet subsequent checks frequently show a materially lower figure. Where the receiving firm has not arranged early, structured introductions or resolved credit questions before work begins, the shortfall tends to widen. Existing partners who see client access and staffing resources shift toward new arrivals without a corresponding plan for the matters they already hold become more open to approaches of their own.

Firms that have narrowed this gap usually treat the first year as a managed process rather than an administrative handover. Common elements include naming a single internal partner responsible for the initial round of client introductions, agreeing in advance how origination will be shared once the new lawyer is inside the firm, and tracking whether the associates or counsel who arrived with a partner remain after 18-24 months. These steps require partner time. They also reduce the chance that a hire produces a temporary revenue spike followed by secondary departures and a second recruitment cycle.

Client conversations are adding a further constraint. A growing number of general counsel are asking external firms, in review or pitch settings, how routine elements of a matter will be staffed as tools improve and what portion of the work still requires partner or senior associate judgement. Firms that can give a concrete answer linked to actual staffing ratios or to changes they have already made in training find the discussion easier both with clients and with their own lawyers. Those that cannot leave both groups unclear about the direction of the practice. Recent market reports note that technology and knowledge-management spending has risen sharply; the open question for many leadership teams is whether that spending is yet matched by changes in how work is allocated and how performance is recognised.

These pressures sit alongside the ordinary work of keeping a group coherent. Practices that have held together through recent movement can usually point to senior partners who continue to invest time in the lawyers beneath them, and to a visible path for those

lawyers. Protecting that time is harder when partners are focused on defending portable relationships, yet it remains one of the few advantages a firm controls directly.

The result is that leadership now involves more frequent, more specific decisions about integration, credit and the shape of future staffing. Partners who have managed groups through this period, including those who have spoken on The Partner Brief, tend to return to the same practical test: whether the firm made the introductions and resolved the credit questions early enough for the new capacity to function, and whether the lawyers already in the group could still see a reason to stay.