Most of the firms we work with ask us for groups. Very few lawyers know that, and most of them plan a move as something done alone: a conversation, an offer, a resignation, and the people they work with every day left to find out on the morning they go.
The firms see it the other way around. A group moves the needle more than a single hire, brings the clients because nobody is left behind to fight for them, and arrives already working. Groups move less often than firms would like because the more complicated a transaction is, the less likely it is to happen, and a group move usually has nobody running it.
Written for partners who lead a practice group, or share one.
A group hire moves the needle more than a single hire.
Richard Brock, Win the Talent Game
Why firms ask for the group
Two reasons from the book, and a third that explains the second. All from the firm’s side of the table, where the offer is written.
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01It moves the needle
A firm growing by lateral hire is buying revenue it can see. A single partner is one line on the plan. A group is a practice, with its own work, its own pipeline and its own reputation, and it makes a bigger splash in the market on the day it is announced. That splash is worth something to the firm, and it is part of what the firm is paying for.
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02The clients come
A common way a lateral hire fails is that the book does not follow. A group makes that much less likely, because the people the client deals with are the people who moved, and there is no one left in the practice at the old firm to fight for the work. The question a firm asks of a single partner, how much of this is hers, has a better answer when the whole team is in the room.
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03It arrives working
The book divides a practice into three jobs. Finders bring the clients in. Minders hold the relationships and run the matters. Grinders do the bulk of the work. Our reading of why a group transition is smoother: a single lateral brings one of those jobs and the firm has to supply the other two. A group brings all three, and the revenue starts in the first month rather than the first year.
How big is a group
The typical size of a group hire. Much above that, it starts to look like a merger.
Group hires typically run from three to twenty lawyers. Mergers can involve hundreds, though twenty to fifty or more in the acquired firm is more common, and in a merger one firm, usually the smaller, no longer exists afterwards. That is the difference. A group hire has the paperwork of a transaction, and somebody has to run it.
How we run a group move or a combination
From Win the Talent Game
What a firm will weigh
Our founder calls a group hire a classic risk and reward strategy. A firm reading your group is weighing three things, and you can answer all three before it asks.
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01Whether it holds together
A single lateral who does not work out is costly. A group that does not work out is exponentially more so, and the firm knows it. It will want to know that every partner in the group has actually said yes, not that you assume they would. Partner to partner, you may have that conversation now.
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02Whether it will integrate
The lawyers in a group have each other, and a firm’s quiet worry is that you will stay an island inside it. Answer it before it is asked: which of the firm’s clients your practice would serve, and which of yours would use the firm’s other practices. A group that arrives with that plan is easier to say yes to.
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03Who originates what
If two or more of you bring clients, agree the origination credit between yourselves before a firm raises it, because it will. The book lists rainmaker conflicts inside a group among the ways a group hire goes wrong, and they are avoidable in a conversation that takes an hour.
Build the group
Add the people who would come with you and watch the practice assemble. This is not a valuation. It reads whether a firm would see a whole practice or a partner with company, what it will ask about, and who you may talk to before you leave.
The four kinds of people in a group, in full
What the instrument above is counting, and who may be asked when.
| Who | What they do | Size | When they may be asked |
|---|---|---|---|
| Partner who brings clients | A finder. Originates the relationships. | Counts toward the three to twenty | May be asked before departure, partner to partner |
| Partner or counsel who runs them | A minder. Holds the relationships, runs the matters. | Counts toward the three to twenty | May be asked before departure, partner to partner |
| Associate who does the work | A grinder. Not asked before the partners have left. | Counts toward the three to twenty | Not asked before the partners have left |
| Paralegal or assistant | The practice does not run without them. Not asked before departure. | Does not count toward the size | Not asked before the partners have left |
How a firm reads the shape
- A whole practice: finders, minders and grinders all present. A firm reads it as a practice that arrives working.
- A practice with a gap: no finder means the firm is buying capacity rather than clients; no minder means the relationships rest on one person; no grinder means the firm has to staff it from day one.
- A partner with company: fewer than three lawyers. Still worth doing, and one more lawyer makes it a group.
- Merger territory: more than twenty lawyers. A different conversation, which starts with leadership.
Who you may talk to, and when
The part groups get wrong two ways: the partners who ask too early, and the ones who never ask and leave behind the people who did the work.
Before you leave, you may
- Talk partner to partner. Conversations between partners about moving are generally treated differently from conversations with people who report to you.
- Agree among the partners who originates what, and which clients are each partner’s for the purpose of notice.
- Prepare the paperwork for every departing partner: the notice, the proposed joint letter, the plan for the dates.
- Choose the firm together, before anyone outside the partners hears a word.
Before you leave, you must not
- Solicit associates or staff. The rule varies by state, and this is the conversation a group move plans with counsel rather than holds in a corridor.
- Seek any client’s commitment to move before the firm has been told.
- Take anything from the firm’s systems, for anyone in the group.
- Let the group leak. Every additional person who knows is a person who can end the move for all of you.
The associates and staff are not asked before the partners have left, and they are not left behind either. When we run a group move, the new firm’s offers for them are ready for the day the partners go, so nobody is approached before they may be, and nobody who did the work finds out from the hallway.
The one person running it
Groups fall apart in the gap between the first conversation and the signed offers. A group move is five or ten moves that all have to close on the same day, with one firm, one set of terms, and a calendar nobody owns. Every week that passes is another week for the old firm to notice.
Running that calendar is the job. Our founder’s word for it is talent broker: make the introduction, then handle the details of the transaction all the way until the deal is closed, for every person in the group.
Bring us the group
Tell us who would come, and we will tell you how a firm would read it, which firms are asking for a group like yours, and how the move runs without anyone breaking a rule. There is no fee to a lawyer, and your name goes nowhere without your say.
Keep reading
The question a firm asks of a group is the one it asks of a partner: what travels. And if the group is smaller than you hoped, the minimum book myth is about why that matters less than you think.
The same book, from both chairs
Six pieces drawn from Win the Talent Game. Three for the firm doing the hiring, three for the lawyer deciding whether to move.
For firms
For lawyers
- The Minimum Book MythFor lawyers weighing a move
- Don’t Move AloneYou are here
- The Day You ResignFor lawyers who have decided