Law Firm Transactional Lawyers Moving to Firms in Other Markets

For law firm partners looking to move, the size and characteristics of their book of portable client business are primary considerations. They need to consider the differences in billing rates in various markets.  A partner moving from Toledo to New York, let’s say, might find his clients unwilling to pay the higher rates often called for in the NY market.  This is an issue especially in practice areas which are more “low margin,” that is where supply of lawyers in a particular practice area has pushed down the hourly rate, and/or the tendency for established corporations to take certain kinds of work in-house.  I am thinking of areas such as patent prosecution and immigration. 

In-house opportunities are governed by different variables which correlate strongly to the kind of business activity in which the company is itself are engaged, the location of the corporate headquarters and whether there is a centralized or distributed management decision making structure.


Most of what I have to say today relates to transactional lawyers lateraling to a law firm, at the junior and mid-levels, in a different city.  It’s true that, for many purposes, you can be physically located almost anywhere with a computer and skype access. For more junior folk, you need to consider relative market characteristics from the stand point of subject matter and local business activity. The kind of legal activity in a market follows from the business activity in that market. There is not, for example, much maritime legal activity in a landlocked city. 

Going back to when a attorney chooses his or her law school, you will find it easier to find work in a market where there are alumni from your law school.  Employers respond more favorably to law schools where they know alumni.   If you don't go to a nationally known, top 20 law school, go to the best law school that you can get into in the region where you want to work.

In choosing your practice area in anticipation of a later move, the associate should consider what kind of business activity is most common in the region where she wishes to relocate.  An associate who is a Eurobond lawyer may need to retool themselves to market himself to firms in, let’s say, Omaha, where there is not much business or legal activity in that practice area.  However, someone who gets experience in New York in, let’s say transactional IP, will find it relatively easy to transition to the Silicon Valley market.

In New York and certain other major markets, like Chicago, LA, DC, large firm transactional lawyers are typically encouraged to become highly specialized.  The reasons for these are twofold. On the one hand, clients are often unwilling to pay for an associate’s learning curve in new kinds of matters. However also in these major markets there exists a volume of work in these respective specialties and subspecialties which makes specialization possible.

In smaller and secondary markets, like New Orleans or Denver, large firm transactional lawyers tend to be generalists because lawyers there do not typically have the same shear volume of specialized work.  

Moving from a highly specialized practice to one more generalized and visa versa is most easily done when you are more junior—let’s say in the first three years of post law school practice.

The reason for this is a very practical one.  A NYC transactional lawyer who moves to Minneapolis will find himself with skills and experience which are different to that of his Minneapolis peer.  He will be stronger in some areas and weaker in others.  The more senior a lateral is, the more difficult it is for this prototypical Minneapolis law firm to plug him into their hierarchy.

On the other hand, the more senior generalist large firm lawyer from, let’s say New Orleans, will have a more difficult time finding  a position with a peer firm New York because those firms have a much more segmented corporate practice.  This lateral candidate will lacks, for his class level, the sheer volume of experience in any one  practice specialty.  Once again, the large firm will have trouble slotting him or her into their hierarchy.

The generalist attorney will probably find herself more in demand at smaller, middle market law firms since these firms, like the firms in their former jurisdiction, will lack the kind of volume in a any practice specialty to justify segmenting of their corporate practice.


It goes without saying that a change in geography may very well call for the candidate to become admitted, by exam or on motion, in her new state.