A lateral move is a move from one law firm to another as an experienced hire — a lateral attorney — rather than an entry-level associate straight out of law school.
The process runs in five broad steps: you pick your timing, choose between a legal recruiter and a direct approach, clear the hiring firm's conflicts and background checks, negotiate the offer, and resign with professional notice.
Here is how each step works.
What is a lateral move?
In legal hiring language, a lateral move is a move from one law firm to another as an experienced hire.
A lateral attorney — sometimes called a lateral hire — is the lawyer making that move, at any level from a junior associate to a senior partner.
A lateral associate joins a new firm carrying the class year and experience they already have; a lateral partner brings client relationships with them.
What separates a lateral from an entry-level hire is the basis of the hire: an entry-level associate is hired on potential, while a lateral is hired on a record that is already on paper.
That record is the currency of the whole process.
The practice area you have built, the matters you can show you ran, the courts you are admitted in, the client and referral relationships you maintain — this is the record a hiring firm is evaluating, so expect the conversation, and the offer, to center on what you bring with you rather than on an entry-level package.
Your law license is central to the move, and it behaves in a particular way: admission attaches to you, not to your firm, but it is jurisdiction-specific.
Lateraling to a firm in another state raises the admission rules of that state, which the bar admission process there controls.
If you are still mapping the profession itself, the attorney careers hub is the starting point, and the attorney career path guide shows where this move sits on the full ladder.
When is the best time to lateral by class year?
A lateral hire answers a specific firm need — a practice area growing, a seat opening, a capability the firm wants to add.
That puts the timing question on a different footing from entry-level recruiting: the useful question is less what month it is than whether your record matches a firm's need when it arises.
What your class year changes is the basis of the conversation.
For an early-career associate, that conversation is about potential: the training you have had, the practice-area exposure, the skills you can demonstrate in interviews and in writing samples.
For a more senior lawyer, it is about the record itself: matters led, courts admitted in, sub-specialties, clients who ask for you by name.
The further along you are, the more the discussion turns on what you have already done rather than on what you might do.
Two practical consequences follow.
First, keep the record as you go — a running list of matters and your role on each, your admissions and your credentials — because it is slow to reconstruct after the fact.
Second, the useful habit is watching the market for the seat that fits your practice rather than waiting for an anniversary.
Your own agreement still shapes the timing — notice, deferred compensation and unvested amounts are contract terms, as the resignation section below explains — so read it before you set a date.
Should you use a legal recruiter or apply direct?
Both routes reach the same destination — an interview at a hiring firm — and neither is a prerequisite.
The choice is about control and reach more than about effectiveness.
Applying direct means you find the opening — on a job board, through a former colleague, a law-school contact or a referral — and send your materials to the firm yourself.
You control where your resume goes and what is said about you, and you can tailor each application to the firm you are applying to.
The trade is reach: you only see the openings you find, and you are negotiating alone.
Working with a legal recruiter means a search firm presents you to hiring firms, which can put your materials in front of employers beyond your own network.
The trade is less control over how you are presented and where your resume travels — which is why the working relationship deserves questions before it starts.
Ask how the search firm is engaged and paid — fees are negotiated, so ask for the fee and any guarantee terms in writing — and which firms it would send your materials to.
NALSC members subscribe to a code of ethics as a condition of membership, and under that code a candidate may be submitted to an employer only with the candidate's express prior consent; with a non-member firm, ask for that same commitment in writing.
Keep your own log of who has your resume, so a recruiter submission and a direct application do not collide at the same firm.
Whatever the route, the materials are the same: a resume oriented to your practice record, representative matters you are free to describe, and the conflicts information the next section covers.
What do firms check before hiring a lateral?
The checks a hiring firm runs are not bureaucracy for its own sake — the ethics rules make them necessary.
Under the ABA's Model Rule 1.10(a), a conflict of any one lawyer in a firm under Rules 1.7 or 1.9 is imputed to all the firm's lawyers, unless an exception applies.
One new hire can therefore change what matters the whole firm can take on, which is why firms ask for your conflicts information early and in detail.
Expect to provide the names of your current and former firms, the significant clients you have worked for and the major matters you have worked on.
Answer accurately and completely: an omission that surfaces after you have started creates far more awkward conversations than the same fact disclosed during the process.
The model rules also give firms a way to hire around a former-client conflict.
Under Model Rule 1.10(a)(2), a lateral's former-client conflict from a prior firm is not imputed to the new firm if the lawyer is timely screened from the matter and is apportioned no part of the fee from it.
The screen carries its own duties — the rule requires prompt written notice to the affected former client describing the screen.
The practical upshot for you: flag matters that would need screening when the firm asks, and expect that a former client may be notified.
The other two checks are about you rather than the firm's book.
Your book — for an associate, the deal sheet or matter list showing what you actually did on each matter; for a partner, which clients would realistically follow — is how the firm sizes what you bring.
Bar status is the simplest and the least negotiable: the firm needs you admitted, active and in good standing where the work sits.
A move across state lines pulls the destination state's admission rules into the process — the bar admission guide covers how admission works jurisdiction by jurisdiction.
Resignation and notice etiquette
Start with the documents, not the emotions: your employment or partnership agreement, and any firm policies it points to.
The notice period, deferred compensation, unvested amounts and partnership terms are all contract questions answered by what you signed, so read those terms before you tell anyone you are leaving.
One kind of term is treated differently: a restriction on practicing law itself.
Under the ABA's Model Rule 5.6(a), a lawyer shall not participate in offering or making a partnership, employment or similar agreement that restricts the right of a lawyer to practice after the relationship ends — the exception is agreements about retirement benefits.
The rule's own commentary explains the reasoning: a covenant restricting a lawyer's right to practice limits both the lawyer's professional autonomy and the client's freedom to choose a lawyer.
The same rule bars agreeing to a practice restriction as part of settling a client controversy, and its commentary notes it does not reach restrictions included in the sale of a law practice under Rule 1.17.
Etiquette does the rest.
Tell the partner or supervisor who actually manages you first, in person where possible, once you have a signed offer — not before, and not by way of a public announcement.
Give whatever notice your agreement or the firm's policies call for.
Leave your active matters in a state a colleague can pick up: a transition memo, files a successor can find, deadlines calendared.
Keep client relationships out of the departure conversation until you understand your obligations — duties to clients on departure are set by the professional-conduct rules adopted where you practice, so route those questions to your state bar's ethics counsel before you act on them.
State versions govern — confirm before you rely on this
What changes for lateral partners?
A partner lateral runs the same process with a longer diligence list, because there is more to agree on.
The conversation adds three questions an associate move does not have: which client relationships would realistically move with you, how the firm compensates its partners, and what the firm expects a new partner to bring in.
Those questions take time to answer on both sides.
The paperwork has started to standardize.
NALSC — the National Association of Legal Search Consultants — publishes the U-LPQ, an open-source Uniform Lateral Partner Questionnaire that any search firm or law firm may use without obligation, and NALSC estimates it covers about 80% of the data a firm needs from a lateral partner.
Reading it before interviews is a cheap way to see the shape of the questions coming: expect detailed documentation of your client relationships and the work you would bring with you.
The mobility rule from the resignation section reaches the partner level too: the ABA's Model Rule 5.6(a) names partnership agreements alongside employment agreements, retirement-benefit terms excepted.
States adopt their own versions, so confirm the rule as adopted where you practice with your state bar.
Where do you find attorney jobs?
Lateral openings surface through several channels, and they work best in combination: job boards you check on a schedule, the colleagues and classmates who hear about openings early, direct approaches to firms whose practices fit yours, and the recruiter relationships from the section above.
The job board is the piece you can start today.
Browse attorney jobs on LawFirmHires — the board carries legal jobs only, so each listing is a legal role rather than a general posting, and you can narrow it by pay range and benefits.
When you are ready to move, the seat that fits your practice may already be posted.
Career information, not legal advice. The rules discussed here are adopted state by state — confirm anything that affects your own move with your state bar or the ethics authority where you practice.