State of the Bay Area Legal Market
A few weeks ago, we presented a deep dive into the state of the Bay Area Legal Market to BALRA (Bay Area Legal Recruitment Association) while in San Francisco.
We uncovered some interesting insights on Partner growth and the different strategies that some of the fastest growing law firms have deployed there, so we've published the findings as an article.
Despite the burst of the Tech bubble in 2022/2023, lateral Partner hiring levels have slightly increased in the Bay Area
Even though there was a lot of negativity in the wider market last year, this wasn’t realised in the Partner hiring levels.
The Bay Area had about as many Partners moving in than moving out since 2020
Despite rumours that attorneys have been relocating out of the Bay Area, this turned out not to be the case.
Firms have also significantly increased their volume of Partner promotions, at a faster rate than hiring
Firms have been moving people up as opposed to hiring laterally, so good news for aspiring Associates.
Overall, Partner exits have been offset by lateral hires, promotions & firm acquisitions in the Bay Area
There were over 1,000 Partner exits but promotions, hires, a little bit of M&A and intra-firm location moves more than offset this.
The fastest growing firms in the Bay Area were quite spread across the AM Law 200 and also included the UK player Freshfields
Quite a few firms have grown their Partnership headcount. But how have these firms grown and what strategies did they use?
The fastest growing firms had different strategies
We found 4 main categories:
The "Lateral Lovers"
Firms that grew mostly through lateral recruitment
The "Super Mergers"
Firms that grew mostly through acquisitions
The "Promoters"
Firms that grew mostly through promoting their Associates to Partnership
The "Happy Hybrids"
Firms that grew mostly through a balance of recruitment and promotions
The Lateral Lovers / Lewis Brisbois has attracted talent through an “immediate route to Partnership” strategy
20% of Lewis Brisbois Partner hires were brought in through promoting them to Partner.
The Super Mergers / Two firms made a significant dent in the Bay Area market through combinations
There have been other mergers in the Bay Area but these firms stood out as having the highest proportion through M&A.
+40
Partners in Oakland & San Francisco through combination with full-service business law firm
Wendel Rosen
(2022)
+11 Partners in San Francisco through combination with litigation & transactional firm
Cooper White & Cooper (2022) +2 Partners in San Francisco through combination with boutique litigation firm
Simmonds & Narita (2023)
The Promoters / Latham & Watkins and Gordon & Rees have been making 5+ Partner promotions per year in the Bay Area
Both firms averaged around 5 promotions per year.
19 Partner promotions in the Bay Area between 2020-2023
~5 partner promotions / year
18 Partner promotions in the Bay Area between 2020-2023
~5 partner promotions / year
The Happy Hybrids / Goodwin, Baker McKenzie and K&L Gates had an even number of lateral hires and Partner promotions
These 3 firms almost made an identical number of Partner promotions to hires.
Written using data from Pirical Legal Professionals (PLP)
Global attorney database built with the most comprehensive sources of data on the market. Designed for law firm lateral hiring teams, legal headhunters and strategy planners, our data tracks over 580,000 profiles across 130+ countries. PLP enables firms to source talent quicker, leverage their own network for referral opportunities, map out competitors’ org structures and research new markets.
Subscribe to the latest data insights & blog updates

Fresh, original content for Law Firms and Legal Recruiters interested in data, diversity & inclusion, legal market insights, recruitment, and legal practice management.
