For years, the most visible sign of competition in New York’s legal market has been the lateral partner hire. A leading rainmaker moves from one elite firm to another, often accompanied by a significant compensation package, and the move becomes another marker of just how competitive the market for senior talent has become.
Increasingly, however, the more interesting story is what happens around those partners.
In August, Sidley Austin recruited an 11-lawyer fund finance team in New York from Hogan Lovells Cadwalader. Led by partners Brian Foster and Patrick Calves, the group also included three counsel and six associates. The move followed Sidley’s earlier recruitment of former Cadwalader fund finance partner Leah Edelboim alongside a team of nine counsel and associates in February.
It is a useful example of a wider dynamic playing out across the market. Firms are not always looking simply for an individual partner and their book of business. In strategically important practices, the real prize can be an established team: senior lawyers, associates and the infrastructure around them capable of adding meaningful capability from day one.
For New York’s legal recruitment market, that creates a different kind of talent war.
Why Hire a Partner When You Can Hire a Team?
The attraction of a team move is relatively straightforward. Recruiting a high-performing partner gives a firm expertise, relationships and potentially a portable book of business. Recruiting the lawyers who already work effectively around that partner can give the firm something else: an operating practice.
The team understands how the partner works. Associates know the clients and matters. Counsel can provide continuity between senior leadership and execution. Rather than hiring a rainmaker and then spending months building the supporting bench around them, a firm can acquire a group that has already demonstrated it can work together. This matters particularly in areas where demand for specialist talent is high.
Recent lateral activity has been heavily focused on practices including private funds, private equity, M&A, finance and capital markets. In early September, IFLR described firms as making targeted hires across antitrust, funds and finance to strengthen priority practices, following a private capital and PE-heavy period of lateral activity in August.
Those trends broadly reflect what we are seeing at associate level across the East Coast. Fund Formation and Corporate M&A are currently among the strongest areas of hiring activity, alongside opportunities across Capital Markets, Real Estate, Employment and IP.
When a firm wants to grow quickly in one of those markets, bringing across an established group can be considerably faster than building one lawyer at a time.
The Partner Move Is Often Only the Beginning
For recruiters, one of the most important consequences of a senior lateral move is the activity it can create underneath it.
A partner departure can leave an immediate gap at the original firm. Clients and matters may need to be redistributed. Associates may start questioning what the change means for their own progression. The destination firm, meanwhile, may need additional lawyers to support the incoming partner and the work they are expected to generate.
One lateral hire can therefore trigger recruitment activity at both firms. If multiple lawyers move together, the effect can be larger still. The departing firm may suddenly need to rebuild an entire layer of expertise, while competitors can see an opportunity to approach lawyers whose teams are undergoing change.
This is one reason headline partner moves only tell part of the story when assessing the lateral market. The subsequent associate and counsel movement can be just as significant.
Should Associates Follow a Partner?
For associates working underneath a partner who is moving, the obvious question is whether to go with them.
Sometimes it makes considerable sense; an associate may have spent years developing expertise alongside that partner, built relationships with their clients and established a working dynamic that is difficult to replicate. Moving together can provide continuity while opening access to a stronger platform, different clients or improved progression prospects.
There can also be an advantage to joining a new team at an early stage. A partner arriving with a mandate to build a practice may give associates greater responsibility and visibility than they had within a larger, more established group.
Nonetheless, following a partner should never be automatic; what represents a strong strategic move for the partner does not necessarily represent the best career move for every associate around them.
The new firm may have a different culture, compensation structure or promotion pathway. Its wider platform may suit the partner’s clients exceptionally well while offering fewer opportunities in the areas an associate wants to develop. There may already be associates at the destination firm competing for the same work and progression opportunities.
The question for an associate is therefore not simply, “Do I want to continue working with this partner?” It is also, “Would I choose this firm if the partner weren’t moving there?”
This distinction matters.
What About the Associates Who Stay?
A team departure does not automatically mean everyone left behind should start looking elsewhere. In fact, significant partner movement can create opportunities for the lawyers who remain.
An associate may suddenly have greater access to another partner, more responsibility on existing matters or a clearer route to becoming important within a rebuilt practice. Firms that lose senior lawyers will often respond by investing in the remaining team or recruiting new partners around whom associates can build their careers.
The important thing is to understand what the departure actually changes. Who will lead the practice? Where will the work come from? Will clients remain with the firm? Is the firm planning to rebuild? Does the change improve or weaken an associate’s route to progression?
These questions are more useful than assuming that a partner departure is inherently good or bad.
Team Moves Create a Recruitment Ripple Effect
From a wider market perspective, this is where team hiring becomes particularly significant.
Imagine a group of ten lawyers moving from Firm A to Firm B. Firm B may gain an established capability immediately, but integration rarely ends on the day the team arrives. The group may need lawyers in adjacent practices. Increased workflow may require additional associates. New client relationships can create demand elsewhere in the firm. Firm A, meanwhile, has decisions to make. Does it replace the departing partners? Promote internally? Recruit associates to rebuild capacity? Reposition the practice entirely?
Then there are the other firms in the market. Competitors may see an opportunity to approach clients, recruit remaining lawyers or strengthen their own teams while the market is in motion.
The result is that a single team move can create hiring activity far beyond the lawyers whose names appear in the original announcement.
For associates considering a lateral move, following senior partner movement can therefore be surprisingly useful. It can provide an early indication of where firms are investing, which practices are becoming strategic priorities and where new opportunities may emerge next.
What Firms Are Really Competing For
The competition for New York legal talent remains intense, but firms are also becoming more deliberate about what they are buying.
This is not simply a race to accumulate partner headcount. At its most strategic, lateral hiring is about acquiring capabilities: a client base, sector expertise, a practice that complements an existing strength or a team capable of accelerating growth in an area the firm has identified as important.
This helps explain why certain practices can suddenly become extremely competitive recruitment markets.
Once several firms identify the same growth area, whether that is private capital, funds, finance or another specialist practice, competition does not stop at the rainmakers. It moves through the entire talent pool underneath them.
Partners need counsel. Counsel need associates. Growing practices need lawyers with the right experience at every level.
For candidates, that can create opportunities well beyond the initial headline hire.
What This Means for the New York Talent Market
New York has always been a highly mobile legal market, but the scale and strategic nature of current lateral competition makes it increasingly important to look beyond individual vacancies.
A lawyer considering a move should be asking not only which firms are hiring today, but which firms are investing in their practice and why.
Is a firm replacing departures, or building something new? Has it recently recruited a leading partner or team? Does that hire signal a longer-term commitment to the practice? Is there room for associates joining now to grow alongside it?
Those questions can reveal much more about an opportunity than the job description alone.
For law firms, meanwhile, recruiting a star partner without thinking about the talent required around them can limit the impact of even the most impressive lateral hire. Building a practice means thinking about the entire team, from partner through counsel and associate level, and how those lawyers will integrate, develop and ultimately stay.
The New York talent war is therefore becoming about more than who can recruit the biggest individual name.
Increasingly, it is about who can build, or acquire, the strongest team around them.
