Inflated Books of Business; Client Stickiness; Assessing Portability
Decipher Investigative Intelligence conducts due diligence on lateral partner hiring for law firms. In its most recent report, Decipher developed an average lateral partner candidate profile for 2024 and compared it to prior years (Are Lateral Partners Losing More Clients During Moves? Andrew Maloney, Law.com 7/25/25).
Decipher reported the average book of business projected by lateral candidates in 2024 at $2,964,107, up 73% over 2023 and up 110% over the previous 3-year average (Decipher, 2024 Candidate Trends - Supplemental Report).
Based on an annual sample size ranging from 500-750 partners, it is highly unlikely that a few outliers skewed the average. Other potential explanations for the significant increase in projected book size in 2024 are: 1) partner books grew across the industry in a short period of time; 2) partners over-estimated the portability of their clients; 3) client work has become increasingly consolidated in a smaller number of firms; 4) partners with relatively larger books moved at greater rate in 2024.
We'll address each in turn. Spoiler alert: none seem to be satisfactory in isolation.
1) Partner books grew across the industry in a short period of time: The State of the Legal Market Report by Georgetown University Law Center and Thomson Reuters noted both worked rate growth (6.5%) and demand growth (2.6%) in 2024 (2025 Report on the State of the U.S. Legal Market (“Report”), Jim Jones - Lead Author, 1/7/25). Those are healthy rate and demand growth numbers, but not enough to explain 73% growth in projected books in 2024.
2) Partners over-estimated the portability of their clients: According to Decipher, only 57% of projected clients actually followed lateral partners. This is a low figure but is in line with the average reported by Decipher over the last 4 years of 60% (Decipher, 2024 Candidate Trends - Annual Report).
3) Business has become increasingly consolidated in a smaller number of firms: It has been widely reported that clients have been winnowing outside counsel lists for a number of years. If a client redirects work to 10 firms that 15 firms once handled, each of those 10 firms would have a bigger slice of that work, and any partner who could move that work would move with a relatively larger amount of business. However, winnowing of outside client lists has been ongoing for several years and would likely not result in such a year-over-year increase in projected book size from 2023 to 2024.
4) Partners with relatively larger books moved at greater rate in 2024: We heard often from partners in 2022 and 2023 that there was uncertainty in the market and they felt more comfortable with the "devil [they] know." Partners with larger books are generally well-compensated at their current firm and perhaps did not need to take the risk that partners with relatively smaller books might have been willing to take by moving in 2022 and 2023. But uncertainty persisted into 2024 with the November election looming and potential change in Administration.
Perhaps the explanation is some confluence of all of the above; it will be interesting to see whether book projections in 2025 regress to the mean.
Client Stickiness
Decipher calculates client portability percentages by dividing the average number of clients ported by the average number of projected clients. Client portability was highest among partners with 31 to 40 years of experience (86%). 11 to 20 and 21 to 30 years of experience came in second and third with 60% and 57%, respectively. Those with over 40 years of experience and those with 10 or fewer years only ported 13% and 21% of their clients respectively, which Decipher chalked up to the book-end stages of a career with relatively less client contact among the former and less developed relationships among the latter.
