Major law firms are poaching partners from rival firms who can call on their respective teams and deliver from the start. Law firms have seen a lot of business in the post-pandemic recovery era, especially in mergers and acquisitions, banking, finance, resolution and regulatory advisory roles . Many firms found themselves short of manpower to deal with the new business reality, a situation that resulted in the poaching of star lawyers from competing firms.
“It’s the start of a generational shift where we’re going to see more teams move to companies where their managing partner or founders are at their peak and the profit sharing and governance structure is more focused on the system than on personality,” Aneesh Patnaik, head of litigation and practice acquisition at Vahura, a legal research and advisory firm, told the Economic Times.
The top five firms hire between 500 and 1,000 lawyers each; however, the next segment of firms are also aggressively hiring to reach a critical size of over 200 lawyers.
