Lateral Partner Moves: What Lawyers Need to Know Before Changing Firms

A practical guide to LPQs, portable business, partnership agreements, fiduciary duties, and negotiating a lateral move without creating avoidable problems.

The lateral partner market continues to be robust, and it does not appear to be tapering off anytime soon. For partners with a book of business, a call from a recruiter, a colleague at another firm, or simple restlessness may arrive sooner or later. But a lateral move is not only a career change; it must be properly planned in advance. Partnership agreements increasingly include provisions aimed specifically at attorney departures, so early decisions in the process can carry serious legal, financial, and professional consequences.

A partner who mishandles the process may face:

• Lost Compensation: Forfeiture clauses triggered by improper notice or departures to competitors.
• Delayed Return of Capital: Trapped capital accounts causing immediate cash-flow
• Contractual Disputes: Violations of non-solicitation, notice, or fiduciary duties.
• Client-Notification Communications: Mishandled communications that breach client-choice protections.

The safest course is to understand the partnership agreement, ethical rules, fiduciary obligations, and financial consequences before the move becomes public.

Why the Lateral Market Is Moving So Fast

Lateral hiring has been on a tear. Amy McCormack, co-president of McCormack Schreiber Legal Search in Chicago, has seen this trend in the Midwest. “This was one of the busiest first quarters,” she says, with transactional practices and middle-market private equity leading the charge.

Law firm mergers are adding to the churn, and artificial intelligence has become a genuine wildcard. Tina Solis, a partner at Nixon Peabody LLP who serves as ethics counsel to lateral partners, put it plainly: “The jury is still out on what’s really going to happen with AI, but it is evolving so quickly.” A firm’s answer to that question can say a lot about whether its leadership is actually prepared for what’s coming.

Before You Move, Diagnose the Real Problem

An offer is only worth taking if it fixes something real. Some frustrations are specific to your current firm. Others travel with you no matter where you land, because they come with the practice itself. A lateral move typically runs through five stages: market analysis, interviews and lateral partner questionnaires, offer negotiation, notice, and transition. McCormack says the whole process can wrap up in six weeks or drag on for over a year, but you should expect the process to take at least three or four months on average.

Build the Right Advisory Team Early

Get your advisors involved before you need them, not after. Solis has seen the cost of waiting up close: “I have had individuals call me literally a couple of weeks after they have given notice, and their firm has said, ‘sorry, you just forfeited several hundred thousand dollars.’” Unfortunately, because these individuals did not plan ahead, they had run afoul of provisions in their agreements that could not be undone. She says, “[d]on’t be penny-wise and pound-foolish. Get your advisory team together early.”

These decisions are personal, not just professional. That said, the professional fiduciary duty you owe as a lawyer doesn’t disappear once you decide to leave. As a departing partner, you owe duties to your clients, your partners, and your firm, and those duties don’t always point in the same direction. Client interests come first, full stop. Your firm’s interests come second. Your own interests come last.

The LPQ: Where Business and Ethics Meet

Nearly every firm requires a Lateral Partner Questionnaire, or LPQ, as part of the interview process. It’s the prospective firm’s due diligence document, requesting your revenue history, billing rates, major clients, and any pending matters, along with sufficient information to run a conflicts check. Don’t assume you understand the terminology that is being used. You should speak with each firm to make certain that you are providing the correct information in response to what is being asked. The terms “originations,” “working attorney collections,” and “portable business” can have different definitions across compensation systems. Make certain you understand the questions being asked before responding.

Portable Business Is More Than Last Year’s Revenue

Confidentiality and disclosure collide here, too. Solis explains that ethics rules generally permit disclosing client names for conflict purposes, but there are guardrails here as well, and they can vary depending upon the unique circumstances of each candidate’s practice and matters at issue. “That’s a very fact-specific inquiry for which you should obtain legal guidance,” she says. And a $5 million book of business last year doesn’t automatically mean $5 million in portable business at the new firm. Clients aren’t assets owned by the lawyer or the firm; they decide who represents them, and that decision doesn’t always follow the partner out the door.

Read the Partnership Agreement Before You Resign

Modern partnership agreements are more sophisticated than they were a decade ago, which is a big part of why more partners are bringing in ethics counsel before they sign anything. Firms routinely build in notice periods, clawback and setoff provisions, and return-of-capital terms tied to events you don’t control. A clawback requires you to repay compensation under stated circumstances. A setoff lets the firm deduct money you owe it from money it owes you (such as from a compensation or capital account). An equity partner may also wait months (or longer) for the prior firm to return capital while the new firm may expect an immediate contribution. This is a cash-flow squeeze that needs to be understood and minimized to the extent possible.

These monetary disincentive provisions often treat partners differently depending on where they’re headed, with steeper penalties for those leaving for a competing firm than for those leaving for an in-house role or government service.

How Model Rule 5.6 Protects Client Choice

There’s a specific rule of professional conduct that comes up again and again here: ABA Model Rule 5.6, titled “Restrictions on Right to Practice.” It says a lawyer cannot participate in an agreement that restricts a lawyer’s right to practice after leaving a firm, with narrow exceptions for retirement benefits. The point isn’t protecting lawyers; it’s protecting a client’s freedom to choose their own counsel. The ABA’s Formal Opinion 489 builds on this, advising that a notice period to a firm should be no longer than the minimum necessary for clients to make well-informed decisions and for the firm to handle an orderly handoff, not so rigid that they interfere with a client’s choice of counsel.

Negotiate the Whole Deal, Not Just the Number

Once an offer materializes, resist the urge to negotiate piecemeal. McCormack’s advice: “Try and know exactly what you’re negotiating, the whole package,” rather than trickling requests back one at a time. That package can include guaranteed compensation, equity status, capital requirements, and make-whole payments, which simply compensate you for money left behind at your prior firm, such as an unpaid bonus or a deferred distribution.

A Careful Exit Protects the Next Chapter

A lateral move can be one of the best career decisions a partner ever makes: better platform, stronger economics, a fresh start. But it’s not a solo project. Between fiduciary duties owed in three directions, an LPQ that can trip you up if you don’t know a firm’s terminology, and a partnership agreement with sophisticated provisions, the room for error is thinner than most lawyers assume. Build your advisory team, know exactly what’s in your agreement, and put your clients first. Get that order right, and everything else tends to fall into place.

To learn more about this topic, view The Do’s and Don’ts in Connection with a Lateral Move. The quoted remarks referenced in this article were made either during this webinar or shortly thereafter during post-webinar interviews with the panelists. Readers may also be interested to read other articles about lateral move.

This article was originally published on [August 22, 2026].

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