Minding Your LPQs: How Firms Should Draft and Deploy the Lateral Partner Questionnaire
The lateral partner questionnaire (LPQ) should not be a mere formality – instead, it should be considered your first line of defense in lateral partner hiring. Sadly, too many law firms leave themselves vulnerable by starting with an incomplete LPQ or failing to insist on thorough completion. Indeed, in a review of more than 1,000 […]
Why Lateral Partners
Why Lateral Partners? Law Firms’ Rationale It’s a hot legal market for lateral partners these days, and growing hotter. Why? Lateral partner hires drive revenue growth for law firms. In fact, according to Decipher Investigative Intelligence research, they represent the single largest source of revenue growth potential for law firms. There are four ways that […]
Lateral Partner Hiring: The Do’s And The Don’ts
The practice of law is centered around the idea of collaboration. A top-performing law firm is like a well-oiled machine, where all parts of the system work in tandem to achieve a greater outcome. The role of partner is critically important to the success of a law firm, often overseeing the core operations of the […]
Lateral Hiring After COVID: How the Cost-Cutting Moves of 2020 May Bring a Lateral Exodus in 2021
It’s been a year and a half since the first COVID-19 lockdowns changed everything. To be sure, many effects of the pandemic are far more profound than adjustments to the way we work. Yet for those of us in legal– many of whom are hustling to meet the industry’s double-digit increase in demand – it’s […]
Associate Hiring: Who Has the Hot Hand?
Halfway through the year, 2021 is proving to be The Year of the Associate. In Corporate alone, the AmLaw 100 hired 724 associates as of the end of May – an increase of 53 percent over the four-year average for the same period. It’s truly a market-changing level of movement: More than 270 associates have […]
2021 Could Be the Year of the Associate: Buyer Beware
Decipher tracked lateral associate moves in the first quarter of 2021 and each of the four years prior. The data shows a market-changing level of movement in specific regions and practice areas where young lawyer mobility is on the rise. Set aside the racy headlines about same-day offers and six-figure signing bonuses: Data provides actual […]
Red Flags on the Rise
In the second year dominated by COVID-19, one major pandemic trend holds true: Fewer lateral lawyers are changing firms, but those who are moving are riskier bets. Indeed, before COVID-19, the “red flag rate” for candidates who received a full screening from Decipher was 34 percent. During the coronavirus crisis, that number jumped to […]
Avoiding the Bad Client Surprise
Nearly 20 percent of lateral partner candidates neglect to provide a comprehensive list of their clients to their prospective firms, according to Decipher Investigative Intelligence research. This means that law firms that rely on the lateral partner questionnaire (LPQ) alone take serious risks – reputational, financial and otherwise – of taking on radioactive representation. Imagine […]
Your Next Lateral: Book of Business or Short Story?
Planning to recruit laterals in 2021? Consider this: 62 percent of laterals fail to bring their promised book of business. 73 percent of clients say they do not follow laterals to their new firms. The failure to transition (or manifest) a book of business is among the primary reasons less than 10 percent of lateral […]
How COVID-19 Shaped Lateral Hiring Report
A SPECIAL DECIPHER REPORT How COVID-19 Shaped Lateral Hiring – and What Happens Next Who Moved, Who Didn’t, and What Law Firm Leaders Should Be Asking in 2021 Overview When the coronavirus shut down all facets of everyday life in 2020, law firm lateral hiring was no exception: Nationwide, lawyer moves among the 500 largest law […]
