Ed. note: Welcome to our daily feature, Quote of the Day.
The highest-profit firms are using their wallets and their success to then target the better-performing and higher-generating partners from that next group of firms. Essentially, in some sense, they’re buying the demand from the ones who have it but don’t have sufficient profitability to pay those people. So the demand is getting aggregated to the people with the deep pockets.
— Owen Burman, senior consultant at Wells Fargo’s Legal Specialty Group, in comments given to the American Lawyer, on the state of the legal market generally. Burman noted that lateral activity was up “broadly” this year, with elite firms taking partners — and demand — from the rest of the top 50 firms.
Staci Zaretsky is the managing editor of Above the Law, where she’s worked since 2011. She’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email her with any tips, questions, comments, or critiques. You can follow her on Bluesky, X/Twitter, and Threads, or connect with her on LinkedIn.
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