Litigation Report May 2026
Q2 2025 through Q2 2026 · 5,000+ Tracked Moves
By the Numbers
Litigation is the most active lateral practice area in the market. More than 5,000 attorney moves were tracked from Q2 2025 through the early weeks of Q2 2026—nearly double the activity seen in corporate and five times the volume in banking. The market spans a wide spectrum of firms, from high-volume insurance defense and commercial defense shops to elite trial and white collar practices, each with distinct hiring patterns and candidate profiles.
The 62.3% title change rate is notably higher than corporate (47.5%) or banking (43.1%). This reflects two factors unique to litigation: the large volume of judicial clerks entering the associate market for the first time, and a broader range of title structures across the litigation firm spectrum—from boutiques to high-volume defense shops—that create natural title shifts even in lateral-to-lateral moves.
Firms Moving Together
Litigation produced the largest single-month group moves of any practice area in the dataset. High-volume defense firms dominated group hiring, consolidating attorney headcount through large monthly intake events rather than steady trickle hiring. Elite trial and white collar firms also made notable concentrated hires at the Am Law level.
Kirkland & Ellis — September 2025: The largest single-month group move across all three practice areas tracked. 31 litigation attorneys joined Kirkland in one month, drawn from a broad range of Am Law and regional firms.
Wilson, Elser — October 2025: 28 attorneys joined, continuing the firm's pattern of large-scale monthly intake as it expanded its national commercial defense platform.
Gordon & Rees — September 2025: 22 attorneys joined in a single month, followed by another group of 21 in January 2026—one of the few firms with back-to-back large group moves across consecutive quarters.
Crowell & Moring — August 2025: 20 attorneys joined, reflecting a push into commercial and government litigation capacity ahead of the Q1 2026 peak.
Lewis Brisbois — October 2025: 20 attorneys joined in a concentrated October intake, consistent with the firm's national expansion strategy across insurance and commercial defense.
Davis Polk — October 2025: 18 attorneys joined, representing one of the largest Am Law white collar and securities litigation group moves of the period.
Who Got a New Title
The Law Clerk → Associate transition is the defining title move in litigation, with 1,095 attorneys making that transition during the period. This reflects the annual judicial clerkship cycle—one of the primary pipelines into litigation practice at Am Law firms. The reverse flow (Associate → Law Clerk) is also notable at 378, representing attorneys who chose to clerk after beginning their careers in private practice.
Most Common Title Transitions
Green = promotion · Gold = in-house or role shift · Red = title reduction (often reflects firm titling conventions, clerkship rotations, or intentional career moves)
Judicial, Government & In-House
741 litigation attorneys moved to non-law-firm positions during the tracked period—by far the highest non-firm exit rate of any practice area. Litigation's pipeline into judicial clerkships, government service, and public interest work is a structural feature of the practice that has no equivalent in transactional law.
Top Government Destinations
Top In-House Destinations
The judicial destination data reflects a full year of clerkship cycles—U.S. District Courts and Courts of Appeals absorbed the majority of outgoing attorneys, with the Second and Ninth Circuits leading. The U.S. Attorney's Office and DOJ remain the top government destinations, consistent with the government enforcement environment that has kept white collar demand high throughout the period.
When Attorneys Move
The class year distribution in litigation is broader than in corporate or banking, with meaningful movement extending from the class of 2014 all the way through 2024. This reflects litigation's longer career arc—partners and senior counsel remain active in the lateral market well into their careers, and the practice's specialist nature means experience accumulates value over a longer runway than in transactional work.
The class of 2024 appearing as the second most active cohort is unique to litigation and reflects the judicial clerkship pipeline. Many 2024 graduates clerked for a year and are now entering the associate market—a pattern that inflates the most recent class year figures compared to corporate or banking, where clerking is far less common.
What Practitioners Work On—and What They Pick Up
Commercial litigation is the anchor specialty of the market, appearing more frequently than any other in both arrival and departure profiles. Insurance defense, investigations, and product liability round out the most active sub-specialties. The post-move specialty data reveals where firms are actively building capacity: arbitration, insurance, labor and employment, and construction all saw significant increases as newly acquired specialties following a lateral move.
Top Specialties at Arrival Firms
New Specialties Picked Up After Move
Arbitration as a newly acquired specialty stands out. 231 attorneys added arbitration to their profile after moving—reflecting both firm-level demand for international and domestic arbitration capacity and the growing prevalence of arbitration clauses in commercial contracts that is pushing dispute work outside of court. Health care litigation also grew meaningfully as a post-move specialty, consistent with the enforcement and regulatory scrutiny driving disputes in that sector.
Where People Moved From and To
New York leads both departure and arrival volume, but litigation shows the most geographically distributed activity of any practice area in the dataset. Washington DC, California, Texas, and Florida all represent substantial markets with distinct demand profiles—DC driven by government enforcement and regulatory litigation, California by consumer class actions and tech disputes, Texas and Florida by commercial and insurance defense work.
Top Departure Cities
Top Arrival Cities
Washington DC is a net receiver of litigation attorneys, with 302 arrivals versus 176 departures shown in the location data—a significant positive flow driven by government enforcement work, regulatory litigation, and the concentration of appellate practices in the capital. Los Angeles also gained ground relative to its departure volume, reflecting California's expanding role as a litigation hub for consumer, tech, and entertainment disputes.
When the Market Moved
Q3 2025 was the most active quarter in the litigation dataset by a substantial margin—2,352 moves in a single quarter. This is the highest single-quarter figure across all three practice areas tracked and reflects the convergence of the annual judicial clerkship cycle ending in summer, large group moves at multiple firms, and sustained associate-level demand throughout the period.
Counsel: 35
Associates: 799
Other: 63
Counsel: 87
Associates: 2,083
Other: 147
Counsel: 64
Associates: 1,597
Other: 96
Counsel: 90
Associates: 1,287
Other: 137
Counsel: 24
Associates: 312
Other: 20
Unlike corporate and banking where Q1 is the peak quarter, litigation peaks in Q3—driven primarily by the judicial clerkship cycle. Law clerks typically begin their clerkships in August and complete them in July of the following year, meaning July through September produces a concentrated wave of clerks entering private practice as new associates. Firms that want access to this pipeline need to be making offers in the spring and early summer, well before Q3 activity materializes.
Who Hired Most
The litigation hiring landscape spans two distinct tiers. High-volume insurance defense and commercial defense firms—Wilson Elser, Gordon & Rees, Lewis Brisbois—lead in raw headcount, operating national platforms that absorb large numbers of associates across many markets simultaneously. The second tier consists of elite Am Law trial and white collar practices where volume is lower but the profile of candidates is significantly different.
Who Hired Most
Litigation Open Positions
261 active litigation associate openings are currently in the market. The geographic distribution of open roles in litigation differs notably from corporate and banking—Los Angeles leads all cities, reflecting California's outsized share of consumer, tech, and entertainment dispute work. Commercial litigation remains the dominant specialty in demand across the board.
Top Firms Hiring Litigation Associates
Top Cities for Litigation Openings
Litigation Specialties in Active Demand
Wilson Elser's dominance of the open position list—55 open roles, more than three times the next firm—reflects the scale of its national build-out and its operating model of absorbing large volumes of associates across multiple markets simultaneously. For candidates at elite Am Law platforms, the more relevant hiring signal is Kirkland, Greenberg Traurig, Latham, and Gibson Dunn, which are all actively filling roles with a significantly different candidate profile in mind. Los Angeles leading all cities in open positions is a meaningful data point—California's litigation market is generating more active hiring demand than New York right now, driven by consumer class actions, tech disputes, and entertainment litigation.
What the Movement Tells Us
Litigation is the largest and most structurally complex lateral market of any practice area. The 5,000+ moves tracked in this period represent a market operating at full capacity across multiple distinct segments—high-volume defense, Am Law trial, white collar, appellate, and plaintiff-side practices each with their own hiring cycles, candidate profiles, and geographic concentrations.
The Q3 seasonality is the most important planning insight in the litigation data. Unlike corporate and banking, where Q1 is the peak, litigation peaks in Q3 because the judicial clerkship cycle ends in summer. The 2,352 moves recorded in Q3 2025 represent an annual pattern that repeats predictably. Firms that want access to top clerk talent need to recruit during spring and make offers before the summer, not in response to Q3 movement that has already happened.
The Law Clerk → Associate pipeline—1,095 attorneys—is a defining feature of litigation talent that has no parallel in transactional practice. Clerks emerging from federal district courts and circuit courts carry an analytical rigor and judicial exposure that firms actively value. The competition for clerks from top courts is intense, and the firms that win that competition tend to be the ones with established judicial clerkship programs and strong relationships with the bench.
The government and judicial exit rate in litigation (741 total) is also worth understanding clearly. These are not attorneys leaving the profession—many will return to private practice after their government stints with significant courtroom experience and institutional relationships that make them more valuable, not less. Firms that maintain relationships with alumni in government roles and judicial chambers are better positioned to benefit from that re-entry pipeline.
Commercial litigation's dominance in specialty data reflects the breadth of the practice—nearly every business dispute of consequence ends up in this category. The faster-growing specialties post-move tell a more forward-looking story: arbitration demand is rising as parties seek to keep disputes out of an increasingly congested court system; data privacy and class action work is growing as state privacy laws proliferate; and construction litigation is expanding in markets with significant infrastructure and development activity.
For candidates, litigation offers the most geographically distributed opportunity set of any practice area. Los Angeles, Washington DC, Chicago, and Houston all represent genuine alternative hubs with meaningful volume and firm presence. Attorneys in secondary markets have more realistic pathways to strong platforms than their counterparts in corporate or banking, where New York concentration is far more pronounced. The open position data reinforces this—Los Angeles leads all cities in active litigation roles right now, making the case that the best opportunity may not always be where the most movement historically originated.