Top 10 Mistakes Partners Make In A Lateral Move

There are a plethora more pitfalls than mentioned here that can tank a lateral move, but these are the most common.

Michael Allen

Ed. note: This is the latest installment in a series of posts from Mainspring Legal’s team of expert contributors. Michael Allen is the CEO of Mainspring Legal. He is based in the Los Angeles office and focuses exclusively on Partner and General Counsel placements for top firms and companies. Prior to founding Lateral Link in 2006, he worked as an attorney at both Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP and Irell & Manella LLP. Michael graduated summa cum laude from the University of California, San Diego before earning his JD, cum laude, from Harvard Law School.

After starting Lateral Link a decade ago, and working with some of the brightest minds in law, I still see countless attorneys make many fatal mistakes in their lateral search. Of these, here are the 10 most common mistakes partners make during their lateral search.

1) You oversell (or undersell) your portable business. Trying to accurately gauge your portable business requires a fair amount of finesse and foresight. Sometimes close clients may get left behind in the move; similarly, the pipeline of work for clients can dry up at any time. If you exaggerate your book of business, you enter the firm from day one with a target on your back. Firm leadership will watch your performance like a hawk from the start, and consistent under-performance from expectations you set may lead to an early exit from the firm. On the other end, underestimating your book of business can lead you with little to no offers or an undervalued package. Trying to peg your book of business is like trying to hit up the middle of a fairway with traps lining both edges. This is where we come into play. We use our experience and market knowledge to help you create expectations that will align with reality.

2) You procrastinate on conflicts. You have an offer from your dream firm, you can visualize that Central Park facing office in your head already. The offer is clearing conflicts, you are already preparing to jump ship, problem is, the deal never should have been explored from the start. Conflicts are easy to clear upfront and save everyone time and money in the process. There is also a significant opportunity cost for the partner as well, as they now have to restart the process with another firm. One lesson I learned early in partner recruiting is don’t expect to see a lot options if you are adverse to Chevron. It is often easier to determine which firms are possible for your business up front, especially in cases where your options are limited.

3) You don’t think about the bill rates. A jump in bill rates is a cause for celebration; your time is worth more, you and the firm are raking in more revenue, there is just one potentially unhappy party. As the costs get passed to the clients, and fiduciary duties preclude a partner from consulting clients before jumping to a firm, adjusting bill rates will likely lead to an uncomfortable conversation, even if your platform increases in tandem. We’ve seen many clients happy to acquiesce to fee changes provided the work product justifies the cost; however, there is no quicker way to lose a client then to pass an unexpected 25 percent fee increase to them without justification. As basic as it seems, it has unfortunately happened countless times. Fiduciary duties prevent partners from notifying their clients ahead of time and securing their blessing, making matters more complicated. Your job will be to consider the client’s response before lateraling, and managing their expectations after the move is executed.

4) You buy into just the people and not the firm too. While firm culture is parroted around so much it has lost some meaning, it absolutely exists and is the confluence of people and policies. However, teams change. If you joined a firm because you wanted to work with a specific group of people, more likely than not they will not be around for their remaining legal career. On average, partners move every five years. That team could walk out the door the minute you join. Firms tend to attract certain personalities and caliber of attorneys, and while this changes, it is on average much more constant.

5) You marry your first date. There is a big advantage in creating a market for yourself by pursuing multiple firms and opportunities. When you submit to just one however — even if you are dead set on that firm — you put yourself in a position of weakness. You negotiate against yourself in terms of salary, terms, title, and more. Your ideal firm may lowball you on your compensation package, especially if they know they are the only player in the game. Firms will match the market to play ball, however you create the market by generating multiple offers. A good legal recruiter can act as your agent to help you create a robust market and get you the best possible offer.

6) You don’t look at the cash flow. Half a decade later, Dewey and Heller have essentially become ancient parables for lateraling attorneys. The danger still exists, as we have seen from many firm mergers and collapses since Dewey sank. The warning signs are sometimes explicit. Drastic changes in RPL and lateral leakage are two tell-tale signs of imminent collapse. As an investing partner in the firm, you have the responsibility to ensure that you are moving to a platform that is both right for your practice and is financially stable. The signs are sometimes implicit however, and that is where we see and hear the backstory from our vast network of partner and associate contacts experiencing it firsthand. We witness the signs of trouble long before it becomes public, and we use that information to guide our clients away from firms that show signs of both long-term and short-term instability. Unlike some “anonymous senior officials” we keep the information closely guarded, because leaks would provoke an out of control tailspin in the lateral market.

7) You don’t look at the pipeline. The flow of work at most firms is largely partner driven. Since part of your work will likely derive from servicing institutional or other attorney’s clients, it becomes crucial to investigate how stable that pipeline is. However, you can’t just ask a top rainmaker how long they think they are going to stick around. Often we are in contact with top partners at firms and can get a sense of how happy they are, or if not, how portable these clients are. Your move should not predicated therefore, on mercurial factors like a partner’s tenure. If the partner is nearing retirement age, you should examine the succession plan in place for their work, and if the client/firm relationship will survive their retirement.

8) You don’t make sure your firm is… attractive. Associates are the lifeblood of the law firm model. Without their help, work simply could not be serviced in any meaningful way. The caliber of your work often depends on having a strong team of associates to support you. Firm attractiveness depends on quite a few factors, the most key being compensation, career prospects and quality of life. The first is the most obvious, with associate compensation open, firms essentially send public signals of how much they value associates and whether their firm can bear the cost of highly paid associates. For the most part, associates will go where they can reap the highest salary. Partner tracks are fickle and most associates view the high pay partly as insurance against a closed partnership track. You could quickly find yourself without a team of associates, and the ability to service work, if they lose favor with your firm.

9) You don’t look at the lateral integration plan. Firms are becoming more cognizant of difficulties faced by lateral partners to integrate their business — or even life — into a new firm, and they have responded by developing lateral integration plans to ease the transition. Some find these plans tedious, to many however, they are vital tools to both ease the transition and set expectations for the partner going forward.

10) You don’t look look to see who is getting paid. Compensation spreads are often indicative of a firm’s priorities and compensation structure. The data becomes public every once in awhile, but is generally known to partners within the firm what the general spread is – even if in a black box, closed compensation system. Large gaps in compensation often suggest that senior statesmen are raking in millions for originations while they may be billing minimal amounts. Often these structures are less palatable to your business, however, if you have a similarly large book of business, they can prove extremely lucrative.

There are a plethora more pitfalls than mentioned above that can tank a lateral move, but these are some of the most common ones we see. Lateraling on your own is a risky proposition; using a knowledgeable recruiter who knows the market, firms and key players is a partner’s best bet in securing their optimal landing spot. My colleagues at Lateral Link are happy to assist you, or pass any market info or advice to help you make a seamless lateral transition.


Lateral Link is one of the top-rated international legal recruiting firms. With over 14 offices world-wide, Lateral Link specializes in placing attorneys at the most prestigious law firms and companies in the world. Managed by former practicing attorneys from top law schools, Lateral Link has a tradition of hiring lawyers to execute the lateral leaps of practicing attorneys. Click here to find out more about us.