Law Firm Partner Moves in London - Issue 87

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Welcome to the 87^th edition of Law Firm Partner Moves in London, from the specialist partner team at Edwards Gibson, where we look back at announced partner-level recruitment activity in London over the past two months and give you a ‘who’s moved where’ update. Our records go back to 2007, and this is our methodology.

 

• A Summary of the First Half of 2025

 

This edition marks the midpoint of 2025 and, in addition to our usual bi-monthly report, we have included some facts and figures below comparing the partner-level recruitment activity in the first half of 2025 with that over the same period of the past five years.

The first half of 2025 has seen a continuation and seemingly dramatic acceleration of last year’s record year for partner hires. There were a total of 349 announced partner moves, up on the 268 we saw last year, and 25% higher than the rolling five-year average for the same period (279).

 

 

The most prolific hirer in the first half of 2025 was Fladgate which, aided in large part by the collapse of London firm Memery Crystal, welcomed 12 partners (all of whom were laterals), succeeded by Kirkland & Ellis and White & Case which both hired 10 each, then Edwin Coe and Paul Weiss with 7 partners apiece.

Lastly, ten firms hired a half-dozen partners each since January:  Akin Gump, Baker McKenzie, Clifford Chance, DWF, Gibson Dunn & Crutcher, Greenberg Traurig, Jones Day, Osborne Clarke, Shoosmiths and Simmons & Simmons.

 

• Top partner recruiters in London 2025 (inclusive of hires from non-partnership)*

 

Fladgate	12	(12 laterals)
Kirkland & Ellis	10	(3 laterals)
White & Case	10	(5 laterals)
Edwin Coe	7	(7 laterals)
Paul Weiss	7	(5 laterals)
Akin Gump	6	(5 laterals)
Baker McKenzie	6	(6 laterals)
Clifford Chance	6	(3 laterals)
DWF	6	(6 laterals)
Gibson Dunn & Crutcher	6	(6 laterals)
Greenberg Traurig	6	(4 laterals)
Jones Day	6	(5 laterals)
Osborne Clarke	6	(6 laterals)
Shoosmiths	6	(5 laterals)
Simmons & Simmons	6	(5 laterals)

* To 30^th June 2025.

 

Unsurprisingly, over the same period, the now defunct Memery Crystal suffered the highest attrition, losing 18 serving partners to rivals followed by: the recently merged A&O Shearman (16**); insurance flavoured Kennedys (10); and White & Case (9).

 

• Firms with largest attrition in London 2025 (partnership to partnership moves only)*

 

Memery Crystal	18
A&O Shearman	16**
Kennedys	10
White & Case	9
Paul Hastings	7
Akin	6
BCLP	5
DLA Piper	5
Kirkland & Ellis	5
Mayer Brown	5
Orrick	5
Stephenson Harwood	5

* To 30^th June 2025.

** Includes a lateral departure who moved from A&O Shearman’s Singapore office to Hogan Lovells in London.

 

• Other Fun Facts from the First Half of 2025

 

• 31% of all moves so far in 2025 were female (108).
• 3% of all moves (10) were in-house lawyers moving into law firm partnerships.
• 19% of all moves (67) were vertical hires (non-partners elevated to partnership upon moving from another law firm).

 

• May – June 2025

 

This bi-monthly round-up contains 105 partner moves, which is 31% up on the 80 we saw for the same period last year; 22% up on the cumulative five-year average (86); and 30% up on the cumulative ten-year average of (81) for the same period.

 

 

The most covetous firms this edition were Addleshaw Goddard, Baker McKenzie, Pinsent Masons and White & Case which hired 4 partners each. Next up was BCLP, Dechert, Greenberg Traurig, Jones Day and Osborne Clarke which hired 3 partners apiece.

 

• Top partner recruiters in London May – June 2025

 

Addleshaw Goddard	4	(3 laterals)
Baker McKenzie	4	(4 laterals)
Pinsent Masons	4	(4 laterals)
White & Case	4	(2 laterals)
BCLP	3	(3 laterals)
Dechert	3	(2 laterals)
Greenberg Traurig	3	(1 laterals)
Jones Day	3	(3 laterals)
Osborne Clarke	3	(3 laterals)

In addition, 11 firms hired 2 partners each: Akin, Ashurst, Baker Botts, Broadfield (formerly BDB Pitmans), Gibson Dunn & Crutcher, Kirkland & Ellis, Linklaters, Morrison & Foerster, Paul Weiss, Squire Patton Boggs and Taylor Wessing.

On the other side of the coin, over the same period, A&O Shearman recorded the highest attrition, losing 8 serving partners (including a lateral move from its Singapore office to Hogan Lovells in London).

 

• Firms with largest attrition in May – June 2025 (partnership to partnership moves only)

 

A&O Shearman	8*
Deloitte Legal	4
Herbert Smith Freehills Kramer	3
Howard Kennedy	3
Kennedys	3
Kirkland & Ellis	3
Orrick	3
Paul Hastings	3

* Includes a lateral departure who moved from A&O Shearman’s Singapore office to Hogan Lovells in London.

 

 

 

• Team hires May – June 2025

 

The most sizeable multi-partner team moves this edition were: Pinsent Masons’ hire of a three- partner IP team from Deloitte Legal; and White & Case’s acquisition of a three-partner (one lateral and two verticals) private equity team from Ropes & Gray. All three of the Deloitte Legal émigrés are former Kemp Little partners and they are the latest in a long line of departures from the Big Four accounting firm of Kemp Little alumni following Deloitte’s seemingly disastrous acquisition of the 27 partner TMT boutique in 2021.  

Finally, 6 firms hired two partner teams: Baker Botts (capital markets from Dechert); Broadfield (private equity from Trowers & Hamlins); Dechert (structured finance/CLOs from Orrick); Jones Day (product liability litigation from Kennedys); Morrison & Foerster (private equity from Herbert Smith Freehills Kramer); Paul Weiss (TMT and restructuring from A&O Shearman).

 

• US firm launches in (North) London

 

This edition sees the launch of Los Angeles headquartered full-service law firm Michelman & Robinson (M&R). The firm, which falls outside of the AmLaw 200, is a comparative minnow by Big Law standards. Nevertheless, despite having fewer than 40 partners, it boasts 7 Stateside offices. Unusually for a US firm, it has opened its London outpost in leafy North London.

 

• The “Kirklandisation” of Big Law; yet more of US Big Law’s holdouts drop all equity partnerships

 

A Stateside phenomenon, which has begun to impact the UK recruitment market over the last few years, has been the (initially clandestine and selective) abandonment by uber conservative US law firms of their once sacrosanct all equity partnership models. Over the past eighteen months the trend has accelerated with elite New York firms, such as Cleary Gottlieb, Cravath, and Paul Weiss overtly adopting a non-share tier of partnership. In the past two months, some of the final holdouts, such as Debevoise & Plimpton, have seemingly bowed to the inevitable and have either announced plans to adopt a non-share class of partnership, or are actively considering it.

The changes are an offensive/defensive play forced on the US elite as a direct result of an increasingly widespread recruitment tactic, first used to phenomenal success by that arch-disrupter Kirkland & Ellis in its more than decade-long rapid expansion.

Whilst all-equity partnerships convey many advantages to elite law firms, in a world where most competitors have converted to two-tier partnerships, they are structurally inflexible and, due to the high bar to entry, make rapid partner expansion problematic and prohibitively expensive; particularly when hiring teams. By contrast having a non-share partnership cadre enables a firm to dangle the carrot of day-one partnership to talented senior associates from rivals at limited cost. It can also help (partially) inoculate a law firm against losing its best senior non-partners by giving those lawyers the partnership badge without overly diluting profits per equity partner. Indeed, the savings made have enabled law firms to stretch their equity spread to hire (and retain) increasingly expensive full equity laterals; this phenomenon is in no small part behind the rise of the $20 million p/a lateral.       

Whilst all-equity partnerships convey many advantages to elite law firms… they are structurally inflexible and, due to the high bar to entry, make rapid partner expansion problematic and prohibitively expensive; particularly when hiring teams.

 

• Freshfields’ non-share home turf handicap

 

With virtually every elite US law firm now converting to a two-tier partnership structure, it has been widely reported that Freshfields, the most successful of the UK founded law firms Stateside, is actively considering following suit. Indeed, in order to remain competitive in the US recruitment market, this is now likely inevitable.

Unhappily for Freshfields, the obscure workings of UK tax law—specifically the Salaried Member Rules, actively disadvantage UK-structured LLPs (limited liability partnerships) compared to US LLPs. The Salaried Member Rules are there, in broad terms, to treat ‘fixed share’ partners as employees and tax them as such, which is a higher tax burden than for true ‘equity’ partners. This means that if Freshfields introduces a non-equity tier to its partnership, it will face higher like-for-like costs and an increased administrative burden in its home market compared to several of its US rivals in London. This would be the case even if Freshfields were to hire the same lawyer on exactly the same headline compensation. This paradoxical “home turf disadvantage”, which applies to all UK LLPs* arises because the Salaried Member Rules do not apply to foreign LLPs (which include US law firm LLPs).

Unfortunately, for UK law firms, the Salaried Member Rules mean that UK law firms are required to pay an additional 15% in Employer’s National Insurance Contributions on the compensation of all their non-equity partners (not to mention statutory pensions contributions**) – taxes which many US law firms in the UK avoid simply by virtue of being foreign LLPs.

This paradoxical “home turf disadvantage”, which applies to all UK LLPs* arises because the Salaried Member Rules do not apply to foreign LLPs (which include US law firm LLPs).

Whilst UK taxpayers may feel aggrieved at being denied scores of millions of pounds in revenue from all those foreign LLPs, in practice, the tax take from the UK equivalents is not significant. This is because many UK law firms stay on the right side of the Salaried Member Rules through a series of not-too-expensive, yet painful-to-administer, statutory “workarounds” which create, at least the illusion of, real partnership for their fixed-share partners and so legitimately avoid HMRC (the UK’s revenue service) triggering a finding of “disguised employment”.

These statutory exemptions involve a combination of either: (i) tying a proportion of a given partner’s overall compensation (no less than 20%) to the financial performance of the firm; (ii) (often) funding an individual partner’s capital contributions (their “skin in the game”); and (iii) providing the partner with at least the semblance of influence over the law firm’s business, for example, by granting them limited voting rights.

Fortunately for Freshfields, and its UK peers, the majority of US law firms in London have subsidiaries which are structured as UK LLPs and so are subject to exactly the same Salaried Member Rules as UK law firms. Nevertheless, for those US firms which are not — which less-fortunately for Freshfields includes its most bitter rival — there is an advantage in being exempt from the Salaried Member Rules.

The advantage of foreign LLPs in the UK market extends beyond a mere administrative cost fillip. In today’s fiercely competitive recruitment landscape—where even marginal gains can prove decisive — the ability of a law firm to offer an incoming non-share partner an “all-in” compensation of, say, £500,000 without requiring a capital contribution of at least £100,000 is a significant edge in the war for talent. This is especially pertinent given that recent law firm collapses have shown there is a non-negligible risk of losing such contributions entirely. That risk is only likely to grow with the exponential rise of law firm “star culture,” which has rendered elite firms increasingly structurally fragile.

… the ability of a law firm to offer an incoming non-share partner an “all-in” compensation of, say, £500,000 without requiring a capital contribution of at least £100,000 is a significant edge in the war for talent.

 

 

• “In UK LLP stepped in so far …”

 

So, if being structured as a US LLP in the UK is such an advantage for US law firms in London, why were so many structured as UK LLPs in the first place?  And why don’t more US law firms in London convert back to US LLPs? – after all, with the exception of Jones Day, they will almost certainly be structured as US LLPs at home.

The answer to the first question is that, for most US law firms, the decision to set up in London as a UK LLP would have been made before the Salaried Member Rules came into force (April 2014), so the rules were not factored in. Indeed, many US firms were initially set up as small outposts staffed by Stateside partners on rotation in London solely to practice US law on European deals. At the time, many US firms likely had zero intention of ever launching an English law practice. As such, had there even been some minor tax or administrative advantage for the US subsidiary to be structured as a UK LLP, it may not have been significant enough to warrant the confusion of an additional legal entity. Regardless, with hindsight, those US firms which remained as US LLPs seemingly got lucky!

The answer to the second question is that any structural or legal entity change made on the basis of reducing tax might trigger targeted anti-avoidance tax rules.

 

• And it’s probably going to get (slightly) worse …

 

Over the past two years, the (often covert) adoption of two-tier partnerships by elite US law firms has started to impact the overall number of partner hires in London. Scores of lawyers have already joined US law firms which, under their old all-equity structures, simply could not have hired them as day-one partners. The seemingly final abandonment of all equity partnerships by virtually the entirety of US Big Law’s holdouts is likely to manifest itself in more day-one partner hires at many of these firms in London. Unfortunately for UK LLPs (Freshfields and most US law firms included), it is probable that at least some of these new two-tier partnerships will be structured as US LLPs in London. Them’s the breaks! 

* Alone amongst UK founded Big Law firms Slaughter and May is not structured as an LLP.

** UK employers are legally required to make pension contributions for eligible employees under the automatic enrolment rules established by the Pensions Act 2008.

 

• Other Fun Facts May – June 2025

 

• 33% of moves this edition were female (35).
• Two firms hired from in-house or business: Dechert and Greenberg Traurig (from GIC and Spheres respectively).
• 17% of all moves (18) were moves from non-partnership roles (either moves from in-house or non-partners elevated to partnership upon moving from another law firm).

 

CLICK THE DOWNLOAD LINK BELOW FOR OUR FULL MAY - JUNE 2025 REPORT

 

Please do not hesitate to contact us if you would like to discuss this article or any other aspect of the market in more depth.

 

Scott Gibson, Director scott.gibson@edwardsgibson.com or +44 (0)7788 454 080

 

Sloane Poulton, Director sloane.poulton@edwardsgibson.com or +44 (0)7967 603 402

 

Please click here to understand our methodology for compiling Partner Moves

 

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• Edwards Gibson Partner Round-Up - Our Methodology
• Previous editions of Partner Moves in London
• Quantifying your following and writing an effective law firm business plan
• Specimen partner business plan template
• The Partnership Track and Moving for Immediate Partnership
• Legal directory rankings and their effect on lawyer recruitment
• Restrictive Covenants and Moving on as a Partner