Welcome back to the Big Law Business column. I’m Roy Strom, and today we look at the strength of the lateral partner market. Sign up for Business & Practice, a free morning newsletter from Bloomberg Law.
High-profile lawyers are already making headline-grabbing moves between elite firms this year—so it’s puzzling that recruiters see 2025 hiring off to a slow start.
One possible culprit behind this mystery is law firms’ strong performance last year. With revenues and profits soaring, partners may be less interested in moving, since they don’t yet know what their equity shares will be.
“Lawyers are waiting to see what they’re going to be compensated,” said Kay Hoppe, a veteran legal recruiter based in Chicago. “So I think this is the lull before the storm.”
Many firms are expected to soon tell (or have told) partners that the value of their shares soared. That can add a wrinkle in lateral hiring negotiations, said Jon Truster, a New York-based partner at recruiting firm Macrae.
A partner making $3.5 million, for example, could see compensation rise to $4.2 million with a 20% bump in share values, Truster said. That makes a $5 million offer from a rival firm look less attractive.
“It’s something that needs to be worked on and considered,” he said. “There’s been a lot of high-profile moves this year. What we don’t know is what’s going on underneath that.”
Lateral Action
High-profile moves is right.
- Cravath, Swaine & Moore, traditionally a minor player in the lateral market, hired former Paul Weiss partner Andrew Finch, who was No. 2 in the Justice Department’s antitrust division during President Donald Trump’s first term.
- Kirkland & Ellis snatched a five-partner group from Skadden, led by trial lawyer Allison Brown, who has represented Johnson & Johnson in a series of trials related to its Baby Powder product. Kirkland will open a Philadelphia office with the hires.
- Cleary Gottlieb added San Francisco-based partner Justin “JT” Ho, the former head of Orrick’s public company advisory practice.
- Skadden is picking up Houston deals partner Stephen Gill from Vinson & Elkins, where he was co-leader of the firm’s corporate group and strategic mergers & acquisitions practice.
- King & Spalding made a splash by merging with Saudi Arabian firm Abdulaziz H. Al Fahad & Partners Lawyers (Al Fahad & Partners) in Riyadh.
Yet if these moves mask a quiet overall market, as some recruiters suggest, it matches a lull at the end of last year.
The top 200 firms by revenue hired 441 partners in the fourth quarter, down from at least 725 hires in each of the first three 2024 periods, according to data from Firm Prospects.
Even accounting for the fact that the last quarter is usually the slow one, the dip at the end of 2024 was curious, said Adam Oliver, Firm Prospects’ chief executive. It suggested firms were reluctant to invest in hiring during a strong year.
Quiet Start
January is also slow, Oliver said, though he noted the information is from early days. Firm Prospects will update its database Jan. 27, which he said could show an uptick.
Hiring will likely pick up by the end of the first quarter. That’s been the busiest three-month stretch for partner hiring every year since 2020—with the exception of 2022, when firms added more partners in the second quarter—according to Firm Prospects data.
The high-profile hires so far show how a greater proportion of elite firms are engaging in the lateral market than ever before, said Mark Jungers, chief strategy officer of recruiting firm CenterPeak.
A slew of New York-based firms that were traditionally less interested in hiring have changed their partnership models to adopt a more acquisitive strategy. As those firms hire partners, they also suffer attrition to high-end rivals, Jungers said.
“So there is a whole other level of competition that didn’t exist five years ago,” he said. “And at the same time, being in the lateral market does create more uncertainty and perhaps instability in those firms.”
It all adds up to a choppy start of the year. But I wouldn’t count out Big Law’s appetite for hiring. A busier time might be around the corner.
Worth Your Time
On TikTok: YouTube personality “MrBeast” Jimmy Donaldson and a group of investors tapped Paul Hastings partner Brad Bondi, the brother of President Donald Trump’s pick to run the Justice Department, for legal advice on their bid to buy TikTok, Tatyana Monnay reports.
On Baseball: Major League Baseball’s Baltimore Orioles announced Tuesday their hire of Kamaal Jones as the team’s new chief legal officer and general counsel, Brian Baxter reports.
On M&A: For Bloomberg Law’s On the Merits podcast, I spoke with Kirkland partners Jennifer Perkins and David Klein about their expectations for dealmaking in the year ahead.
That’s it for this week! Thanks for reading and please send me your thoughts, critiques, and tips.
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