Banking Report May 2026
Q2 2025 through Q2 2026 · 1,016 Tracked Moves
By the Numbers
The banking and finance lateral market recorded 1,016 attorney moves from Q2 2025 through the early weeks of Q2 2026. Activity was consistent across all four full quarters, with demand driven heavily by associates in their third through fifth years of practice. Structured finance, secured lending, and acquisition finance dominated both the movement and specialty data.
Firms Moving Together
A group move is defined here as two or more attorneys landing at the same firm on the same date. The banking market saw several significant group moves during the period, with one standing out above the rest as the largest coordinated team move in the dataset.
Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe — October 2025: The largest group move in the dataset by a significant margin. 17 attorneys joined Orrick in a single month, 15 of whom came from Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft—a rare, concentrated team lift from one firm to another.
Latham & Watkins — September 2025: 10 attorneys joined from a range of firms including Sidley Austin, Jones Day, Morgan Lewis, Clifford Chance, and Kirkland & Ellis.
Sidley Austin — February 2026: 10 attorneys arrived, the majority of whom also came from Cadwalader, reflecting continued dispersal of that firm's banking practice.
Paul Hastings — September 2025: 8 attorneys joined from Haynes and Boone, Latham & Watkins, Willkie Farr, and several other Am Law firms.
Proskauer Rose — October 2025: 7 attorneys arrived, including multiple attorneys from Cadwalader and Freshfields.
The Cadwalader pattern across multiple group moves is the defining firm-level story of this period in the banking market. Attorneys from that firm's structured finance and secured lending practices dispersed to Orrick, Sidley, Proskauer, and others across several consecutive months.
Who Got a New Title
438 of 1,016 banking attorneys (43.1%) changed titles with their move. Upward movement was the most common pattern, with associates advancing to counsel roles at the highest rate. A notable number of attorneys also moved into in-house titles, reflecting the consistent draw of financial institutions and asset managers as destinations for banking practitioners.
Most Common Title Transitions
Green = promotion · Gold = in-house role shift · Red = title reduction (often reflects firm titling conventions, not a step down in seniority)
In-House & Government
163 banking attorneys left private practice during the tracked period. The vast majority moved in-house, with financial institutions, asset managers, and private credit firms representing the primary destinations. The in-house pull in banking is distinctive—many attorneys are moving directly to the clients they served, particularly at firms like Goldman Sachs, Blackstone, and private credit shops.
Top In-House Destinations
The presence of private credit firms—HPS, Golub Capital, Oaktree—as in-house destinations reflects the broader market shift toward alternative lending. Banking attorneys with fund finance, direct lending, and structured credit experience are well-positioned to move to these platforms.
When Attorneys Move
The 2023 class led all movement in banking, followed closely by 2022 and 2021. The pattern mirrors the broader lateral market: attorneys 2–5 years out are the most active, carrying enough transactional experience to be competitive candidates while remaining early enough in their careers to make a meaningful platform change.
Classes 2020–2023 account for 539 moves—53% of all tracked banking lateral activity. This four-year cohort is the core of the active candidate pool. Attorneys from these classes have the deal experience firms want and the career flexibility to make a move count.
What Practitioners Work On—and What They Pick Up
Secured finance, structured finance, and lending are the foundation of the banking lateral market. These three specialties appear most frequently both in the profiles attorneys brought to their new firms and in what they added after moving. The growth in fund finance and debt capital markets as newly acquired specialties reflects where firms are actively building capacity.
Top Specialties at Arrival Firms
New Specialties Picked Up After Move
The real estate finance crossover is a notable data point: 60 attorneys picked up real estate as a new specialty after their move, reflecting firms that handle both commercial lending and real estate finance work. Fund finance is also growing as a newly adopted specialty, consistent with the expansion of private credit as a practice driver across the market.
Where People Moved From and To
New York dominated both departure and arrival activity, as expected for a practice area centered on capital markets and institutional finance. The banking market shows notably stronger regional distribution than corporate M&A—Chicago, Washington DC, and North Carolina all represent meaningful shares of activity, reflecting the presence of major financial institutions and regional banking centers outside of New York.
Top Departure Cities
Top Arrival Cities
When the Market Moved
Q1 2026 was the most active quarter with 277 moves, followed closely by Q3 2025 at 266 and Q4 2025 at 247. The banking market showed a more even distribution across quarters than is typical—Q3 and Q4 activity was unusually strong, suggesting firms were filling positions throughout the year rather than concentrating hires in January.
Counsel: 8
Associates: 145
Other: 4
Counsel: 5
Associates: 248
Other: 11
Counsel: 14
Associates: 224
Other: 6
Counsel: 14
Associates: 246
Other: 10
Counsel: 2
Associates: 64
Other: 1
Counsel-level moves picked up notably in Q4 2025 and Q1 2026, with 14 in each quarter compared to single digits in Q2 and Q3 2025. This signals growing demand for mid-to-senior banking practitioners beyond the associate level, consistent with firms building out their lending and structured finance benches at all levels.
Who Hired Most
Who Hired Most
Latham & Watkins and Kirkland & Ellis led hiring in banking as they did in corporate, reflecting the breadth of both platforms across practice groups. Orrick's 30 hires—nearly all concentrated in a single month from the Cadwalader team lift—represent an unusual build rather than sustained quarterly hiring. Mayer Brown, Paul Hastings, and Willkie Farr round out a second tier of active hiring firms with consistent intake across the full period.
Banking Open Positions
There are 183 active banking associate openings in the current market. Demand is concentrated in the 3–5 year experience range, consistent with the class years driving the most lateral movement. New York accounts for the largest share of open roles, with Chicago, Los Angeles, and Charlotte also representing meaningful opportunity concentrations.
Top Firms Hiring Banking Associates
Top Cities for Banking Openings
Banking Specialties in Active Demand
Open positions reinforce what the movement data shows: structured finance, secured lending, and debt finance remain the core hiring targets. The presence of Cadwalader among the top firms with open positions—despite the significant outflow from that firm seen in the movement data—suggests active rebuilding of their banking bench. Dechert and Goodwin Procter lead all firms in open banking roles, with demand spread across their structured finance and fund finance practices.
What the Movement Tells Us
The banking lateral market recorded 1,016 moves in roughly four quarters—a sustained, high-volume pace that reflects the fundamental shift in credit markets over the past two years. Private credit has overtaken traditional bank lending in many sectors, and law firms are actively repositioning their banking practices to serve this new capital stack. That repositioning is what drives much of the lateral movement in this dataset.
The Cadwalader dispersal—visible across multiple group moves to Orrick, Sidley, and Proskauer—is the single most consequential talent event in the banking lateral market during this period. Attorneys from that firm's structured finance and CLO practices carried specialized expertise that multiple firms actively sought to acquire. The result was a broad redistribution of structured finance talent across the Am Law landscape rather than concentration at one destination.
Q1 2026 being the peak quarter is consistent with broader lateral market patterns, but the Q3 and Q4 2025 figures are notably strong for banking—a practice area that historically sees more compressed Q1 hiring. This suggests firms were operating with urgency, filling banking seats as deal flow returned rather than waiting for the new year cycle.
The class year data tells a straightforward story: classes 2021–2023 are the most active and most sought-after segment. These attorneys graduated into a market that demanded immediate deal experience, and many have now accumulated 2–4 years of substantive lending, structured finance, or acquisition finance work. That combination of experience level and deal volume makes them highly competitive candidates across the full range of hiring firms in this dataset.
The in-house pull in banking is worth watching. Private credit firms—HPS, Golub Capital, Oaktree—appearing as destinations reflects the maturation of these platforms as legal employers. As direct lending and fund finance continue to grow, the competition for banking attorneys will increasingly come from these firms operating as in-house teams rather than relying entirely on outside counsel. Firms that fail to offer clear advancement paths risk losing their most transactionally seasoned associates to this expanding in-house market.
Looking ahead, the demand signals in both the movement data and the open positions point to continued strength in structured finance, leveraged lending, and acquisition finance through the remainder of 2026. Attorneys with fund finance experience are particularly well-positioned—demand is growing faster than the supply of candidates with that background, creating favorable conditions for those who have it.