If you’re an associate at a top New York law firm, you know the drill: an inbox full of recruiter emails with vague promises about “exclusive opportunities.” By the time you’ve sifted through the vague pitches and tracked down the roles that might actually interest you, you’ve spent more time managing recruiters than advancing your career.
goLateral wants to change that. The platform is a single marketplace for Biglaw lateral moves, built to connect associates directly with firms, without a recruiter in the middle.
Just ahead of its launch later this summer, M&A associates in New York City can get in early to become one of the platform’s founding members, who will receive $100 for joining. Sign up in minutes. Get paid. No strings attached.
The Current Way Mostly Benefits Recruiters
Although many top firms accept direct applications, lateral hiring still runs overwhelmingly through outside recruiters, who routinely rake in up to $100,000 for a single successful placement.
goLateral’s founder (a practicing M&A associate at a top New York firm who built the platform after living the process firsthand) says the economics explain the state of your inbox. When one placement is worth six figures, blasting associates with vague outreach is a perfectly rational business model, even if most of those emails are too vague to tell whether a phone call is worth your time.
“Recruiters became the default not because they add value for lawyers, but because there was no alternative,” the founder said. “We built the alternative.”
How It Works
goLateral puts open positions in one place and lets lawyers apply directly. But the more important change is what those listings actually contain.
Beyond basics like required years of experience, postings on the platform spell out what lawyers today typically can’t learn until a first interview: the firm’s hiring timeline and the expected mix of work. For M&A lawyers, for example, a posting can indicate whether the practice runs primarily on public company transactions, private equity deals, or strategic acquisitions.
“None of that is ever stated expressly,” the founder said, “and it’s the information that actually determines whether a move makes sense.”
Applying is equally streamlined. Lawyers upload a resume and transcript once, then submit future applications in a single click. In place of the traditional cover letter, which demands disproportionate effort for a document nobody reads, applicants add a brief statement on why they’re interested in the move.
A short skills questionnaire, which takes a couple of minutes, rounds out the profile. Instead of parsing resumes full of nearly identical bullet points, firms compare candidates on practical experience: deal types, typical transaction size, and the work they’ve actually handled. Firms complete a corresponding questionnaire when posting a job, so the platform can surface strong matches before anyone schedules an interview.
Once a firm wants to move forward, goLateral facilitates the interview invitation and scheduling, then gets out of the way. From there, you deal directly with the firm, with no intermediary relaying messages or inserting themselves into the process.
Built to Keep Your Search Confidential
For most associates, the biggest risk of exploring the market isn’t a bad interview. It’s their current firm finding out they took one. The founder of goLateral gets it. He’s still practicing at a top New York firm, which is why you won’t find his name in this article.
goLateral is confidential by design. Firms browsing the platform see a candidate’s experience, credentials, and skills, but not their name or current employer. Your identity is shared only with the firms you choose to apply to. You decide who learns your name, and when. No resume circulating among recruiting shops, no cold submissions to firms you never approved, and no way for your firm to learn you looked.
What’s In It For Law Firms?
Firms get a single pipeline of potential BigLaw laterals, instead of submissions from dozens of recruiting firms at a dramatically lower cost than traditional recruiting. That difference matters to candidates too: a hire who doesn’t arrive with a six-figure placement fee attached is an easier internal sell.
goLateral is launching with a deliberately narrow focus on New York M&A associates at Vault 100 firms, so that participating firms see a deep, concentrated talent pool from day one. Additional practice areas and markets will follow.
Become A Founding Member
Ahead of launch, goLateral is signing up founding members now. Eligible M&A associates at Vault 100 New York firms can join in about two minutes, with no resume or full application required. Founding members receive $100. All you need to do is sign up.
And you don’t have to be looking to lateral in order to join. Whether your next move is around the corner, a year away, or purely hypothetical, goLateral is a quiet window into what’s actually out there. Joining takes two minutes, costs nothing, pays you $100, and stays completely confidential.