About Lateral Moves
I built this because I kept missing things I wanted to know.
Partner moves in your own practice area are worth knowing about. It is a little like gossip, and it also tells you something real about which groups are growing and which firms keep showing up as the place people land. The trouble is that you only catch it by accident, when someone updates LinkedIn and you happen to scroll past it that week.
The industry newsletters cover every practice area at once. If you follow patent litigation, you are reading past M&A and restructuring to reach the two entries that matter to you. I wanted the version that covered my practice area and left out the rest, so I built it.
Where the data comes from
Every entry starts with a public source, usually a firm press release or a story in the legal press. Each move names the attorney and the firm they joined, links to that source, and links to the attorney’s new firm bio once the firm publishes one. Nothing goes up until the full name can be verified against the announcement, which is why some weeks are short. If you spot an error, tell me through rushingrecruiting.com and I will fix it.
Who I am
My career started at Finnegan Henderson, where I spent about two years. From there I went to Cadwalader in Washington to help start their ITC patent litigation group, and after roughly a year and a half I moved out to Silicon Valley to join Weil Gotshal. That is two lateral moves of my own, which is part of why I have opinions about how they go.
I left because BigLaw partnership was not what I wanted. The partners worked harder than I did, and I worked really hard. I interviewed in-house around Silicon Valley, at Facebook before it was Meta and at Palantir among others, and the grass did not look greener from where I was standing. Recruiting let me stay in the legal world and use what I already knew from practicing.
What this data tells me
The obvious signal is which groups are growing. When the same firm name keeps turning up as the destination, that group is hiring and is probably paying up to do it.
Shrinking groups are the more interesting signal. When a practice loses several partners inside a few months, that says something about the place, and it is worth knowing before you take a meeting there. I watch that side closely as a recruiter, and it is the part I would want to know as a candidate.
If one of these moves started you thinking
Most people find this site because a colleague’s name showed up on it. If that has you weighing a move of your own, that is the conversation I have every day. On a 20-minute call I can tell you which firms are actually hiring in your practice area and whether your timing makes sense. Nothing you say leaves the call.
Talk it through before you decide anything
Pick a time that works. Nothing you say leaves the call.
Book a confidential callCiting the tracker
Journalists and researchers are welcome to cite these trackers with a link back. For comment on lateral-market trends, book a call.