Partner retention is a vital metric for law firms so we've decided to take a look at how lateral Partner retention compares across the AM Law 100 and uncover the firms with the strongest retention rates over the last 5 years, as well as any key trends among the hires that ultimately don't work out.

Using publicly-available data tracked by Pirical Legal Professionals (PLP), we've analysed how many of the lateral Partner hires made by AM Law 100 firms between 2020-2024 are still at the firm.

Note on methodology: excludes firms that made fewer than 10 lateral Partner hires and moves as a result of mergers. Data is derived from tracked lateral Partner moves, numbers may be slightly incomplete due to limited public information. Exits include Partners that left but didn't lateral to another firm, eg. retired.

The firms with 100% retention made a relatively low number of hires during this timeframe

"From my perspective, I've seen an increased focus on Partner integration across the industry, which has seen the majority of firms improve lateral retention.

A few firms stand out from the above analysis, with retention rates at or near 100%. Although they typically hire a small number of Partners annually, Cleary Gottlieb, Davis Polk, Debevoise and Fenwick are all high prestige, strong culture firms and thus rank highly. Sheppard Mullin's strong showing of 97% retention from over 100 hires also stands out.

While the first five years are important, firms with the most successful integration results think longer term and endeavor to make their lateral hires part of the fabric of their firms."

Charles Curtis

President, CLCurtis31Consulting

How likely are lateral Partner hires to leave a few years after joining the firm?

Our analysis covers more than 11,000 Partner moves over a 5 year period and from this we've calculated the likelihood of an exit after each subsequent year of joining. As expected, very few Partners leave the firm within the first year of being hired (0.4%) but by year 4 the chance of an exit rises to 7.5%.

More interestingly, is the difference between junior and more senior Partner hires. Newly promoted Partners who were hired from their previous firm as an Associate or Counsel, are less likely to move firm again within the first few years of joining than more experienced hires who joined already as a Partner.

How does retention compare across different segments of the AM Law 100?

The average lateral Partner retention rate across the AM Law 100 is 87%. The most prominent gap in retention is between the AM Law 1-25 (89%) and 76-100 (85%), with the top 25 firms retaining, on average, more lateral Partner hires than the rest of the AM Law.

How often do departing Partners return to their original firm?

2.2% of the exits in our analysis resulted in the Partner moving back to the firm they had previously left, what we've termed a 'boomerang move'. 31 firms registered at least one boomerang Partner move across this timeframe, the firms with more than one are shown below.

Note on methodology

Source: Pirical Legal Professionals, using publicly available data

Excludes: firms that made fewer than 10 lateral Partner hires and moves as a result of mergers

Timeframe: Jan 2020 - Dec 2024

Data is derived from tracked lateral Partner moves, numbers may be slightly incomplete due to limited public information. Exits include Partners that left but didn't lateral to another firm, eg. retired. 

Written using publicly-available data from Pirical Legal Professionals (PLP)

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