The numbers
3,009 partner laterals completed in 2025, the highest figure since 2021, up roughly 10% year-over-year. The volume story is real and the legal press has covered it thoroughly. What most of that coverage gets wrong is the driver.
Press framing has leaned on compensation, on the idea that partners are jumping for bigger guarantees. In our searches, that's true for maybe a quarter of the moves. The rest are about something else.
The merger wave doing most of the work
Three large combinations closed or have approval in the 2025–2026 window. Hogan Lovells and Cadwalader combine July 1, 2026, into a roughly 3,100-lawyer firm. McDermott and Schulte Roth are effective August 1. Winston & Strawn and Taylor Wessing UK have approved a transatlantic combination.
Mergers produce partner laterals in two distinct ways. First, partners in overlapping practice groups reconsider, because the firm's post-merger economics will look different for them, and competitors know it. Second, firms absorbing the merger traffic hire aggressively to rebalance their own practice mixes. Both dynamics run for 12–18 months after the combination is announced, which is where we are now.
Our practical read: a partner at a firm that just announced a merger is usually contacted by two to four competitors within three weeks of the announcement. That's not a coincidence or a pay cycle. It's competitors running a playbook.
How firms actually evaluate portable-book claims
The other major shift in 2025–2026 is how firms diligence a partner's portable book. As of early 2026, the firms we work with are routinely discounting stated portable-book figures by 30% upfront. That isn't a negotiating tactic. It's an informed baseline.
In practice, only about 70% of a stated book transfers in the first 18 months after a lateral move. The 30% that doesn't transfer is some combination of: clients who stay with the original firm for regulatory or relationship reasons, matters that were attributed to the partner but were actually originated by the firm's platform, and contingent matters that never monetize.
This means a partner walking in with a book claimed at $6M is being underwritten by the receiving firm at roughly $4.2M, and the compensation package is structured accordingly. That has changed how offers are presented, and how candidates need to prepare.
What the 30% haircut looks like in practice
The clearest sign a firm is doing this kind of diligence is when they ask for matter-level detail rather than relying on an aggregate book figure. "Who was the originating partner? Who is the billing attorney? Is there a written engagement letter naming you?" Those are the right questions and they are increasingly being asked.
For lateral partners, the practical advice is to come into the conversation with that documentation already organized. Firms read reluctance to produce it as confirmation that the stated book is soft. In the current diligence environment, that's often enough to kill a conversation before it gets to an offer.
Where this goes next
The merger wave is not done. The structural pressures that are driving firms to combine (rising fixed costs, the need for platform scale to compete on AI-enabled work, increasing insurance and compliance overhead) are all still present.
Our working assumption is that 2026 partner lateral volume will match or exceed 2025. The firms winning those searches are the ones that have internalized the 30% haircut, built diligence workflows around it, and can close in the 45-day window a top partner typically has between accepting the first conversation and committing to a destination.