Guide · Lateral partner moves
The Lateral Partner Questionnaire (LPQ): the definitive guide
The LPQ is where a lateral partner move is won or lost on paper. Here is what the questionnaire asks across its ten standard sections, why each exists, how firms define and test a portable book of business, the conflicts and restrictive-covenant rules that govern a move — and a free, branded standard LPQ template you can download and use.
A firm is not buying your revenue. It is buying what moves.
Pick a kind of revenue. Watch where the LPQ actually files it — and how much of it the new firm can count on.
Clients who follow you, where you are the genuine relationship owner and the work can transition cleanly. This is the only bucket a firm truly underwrites. How portability is tested ↓
Same year-end origination report, five very different answers to the only question the firm cares about: how much follows you out the door? The portability test is below.
What a Lateral Partner Questionnaire actually is
It is the firm’s first real read on your judgment, not a formality.
The Lateral Partner Questionnaire — almost always shortened to LPQ — is the structured form a law firm asks a partner candidate to complete once both sides are seriously exploring a move. It is the firm’s primary diligence instrument: a single document that gathers the candidate’s practice, client relationships, financial history, conflicts, compensation and professional-conduct record into one comparable format. Legal-search professionals describe it bluntly as “perhaps the most important part of the lateral hiring process,” with the move often hinging on the LPQ itself.
The point of standardization is fairness and rigor. A firm’s partnership, compensation, finance and conflicts committees cannot make a sound decision on a recruiter’s narrative alone. The LPQ forces the same questions to be answered by every candidate, so the firm can weigh a hire against its own thresholds — and against the other partners it is considering — on consistent terms. It is typically a 10-to-25-page questionnaire covering three to five years of financial history and dozens of subject areas; some firms’ forms have been likened to “War and Peace,” and because the work cannot be delegated, candidates should start gathering data early.
Many firms build their forms on the well-known frameworks published by the American Bar Association and the National Association for Law Placement (NALP). The National Association of Legal Search Consultants (NALSC) has gone further, publishing a Universal Lateral Partner Questionnaire (U-LPQ) — a standardized form plus a conflicts addendum — designed to cover roughly 80% of what most firms ask, so candidates do not re-enter the same data for every firm. No two firms ask exactly the same thing, but the ten categories below appear in almost every LPQ you will encounter.
Treat the LPQ as the firm’s first real read on your judgment.
The ten sections of a standard LPQ
Most questionnaires move from who you are, to what you do, to what you bring, to what the firm must check before it can extend an offer. These are the same ten sections in our downloadable template.
- 10
- Core sections in a standard LPQ — profile, history, book, clients, conflicts, comp, team, conduct, covenants, references.
- ABA / NALP / NALSC frameworks
- 5
- Years of originations and collections typically requested — three to five, year over year.from three to five
- LPQ financial-history section
- 25
- Pages a single-firm LPQ can run to — commonly 10 to 25, covering dozens of subject areas.up to twenty-five
- NALSC / recruiter guidance
- 80
- Share of a typical firm LPQ that NALSC's Universal LPQ is designed to cover, in percent.about eighty
- NALSC U-LPQ
Who you areWhat the firm must check
- 01ProfileCredentials & licensing
- 02HistoryEmployment record
- 03BookOriginations & collections
- 04ClientsMatters & ownership
- 05ConflictsClients & adverse parties
- 06CompPay & capital
- 07TeamPeople & support
- 08ConductDisclosures & standing
- 09CovenantsNotice & restrictions
- 10ReferencesReferees & rationale
Candidate & practice profile
Identity, bar admissions and good standing in each jurisdiction, education, and a short description of your practice and the matters you are known for.
Professional history
Employment history in reverse-chronological order, with dates and titles at each firm or in-house role, gaps explained, and your rationale and timeline for moving.
Book of business & portable revenue
Three-to-five-year originations, billings and collections, realization, billing rates, working- vs originating-attorney credit, your top originated clients, and a minimum / expected / optimistic first-year projection.
Client & matter detail
Significant client relationships, who owns each, the nature of the work and fee arrangements — enough for finance and partnership to understand the book without disclosing confidences.
Conflicts of interest
A client and adverse-party list sufficient for the new firm to run a conflicts check, plus matters subject to ethical screens, joint representations, or prior-firm restrictions. The first gate.
Compensation, capital & terms
Compensation structure and history (base / draw / distributions, W-2 or K-1), paid-in capital and its return schedule, and the terms you would need to consider a move.
Team & BD support
The people and resources your practice depends on, whether the book travels with you alone or needs team members, and the business-development support you expect.
Professional conduct & disclosures
Bar disciplinary history, malpractice claims, sanctions or investigations, litigation involving you, and the circumstances of prior departures — answered candidly and early.
Restrictive covenants & notice
Notice period, garden leave, non-solicitation or non-dealing restrictions, deferred-compensation forfeiture, and the client-transition plan consistent with your professional obligations.
References & rationale
Professional references the firm may contact later with your consent, and your own view of the move and what success looks like in the first year.
Portable book of business: what counts, and what does not
More lateral hires turn on this question than any other. A firm is not buying your historical revenue — it is buying the revenue it can expect after you move.
A portable book of business is the client work you can realistically take with you to a new firm. The hard part is that “realistically” does a lot of work. Revenue that looks like yours on a year-end report may not move at all if the relationship belongs to an institutional team, a co-counsel, your current firm’s brand, or a client whose engagement letters or procurement rules tie it to the incumbent. The LPQ’s financial section asks you to separate your originations (business you generated) from your working- or responsible-attorney credit (work you run but did not originate), and to flag any partial or shared origination credit explicitly.
Firms therefore separate your originations into three buckets, and only the first is truly portable:
From the year-end origination report down to what the firm will underwrite
- Reported originations — everything credited to you on paper
- Less shared / institutional work — relationships you contribute to but do not control
- Less non-portable work — platform-tied, conflicted at the new firm, or one-off
- Portable, controlled work — what the firm actually buys
- Portable, controlled work — clients who follow you, where you are the genuine relationship owner and the work can transition cleanly.
- Shared or institutional work — relationships you contribute to but do not control, which typically stay with the current firm or its team.
- Non-portable work — matters tied to the platform, conflicted at the new firm, or one-off in nature.
The portability gap is large, documented, and the reason diligence exists
Optimistic books rarely survive contact with reality. The Thomson Reuters Institute reports that laterals bring on average only about 22% of their book of business to a new firm, though the figure ranges widely. ALM Intelligence has found that roughly two-thirds of lateral hires do not come within 75% of their expected book, that nearly half leave within five years, and that the average cost of bringing in a lateral approaches $1.7 million. ABA-published commentary puts the share of laterals who underperform or leave within five years at 50–60%. Portability also varies by practice: it tends to run higher in personal, relationship-led fields and lower in institutional, team-based ones. None of this is an argument against moving; it is the reason the financial section is verified rather than taken on trust.
How firms test portability
- Relationship ownership. Who does the client call first? Whose judgment do they buy? A name on the origination report is not the same as control.
- Multi-year collections. A consistent collections history across several years is far more persuasive than one strong year, which can mask a single large matter.
- Concentration risk. A book that is mostly one client is more fragile than the headline number suggests.
- Conflicts at the destination. Business is not portable if the new firm cannot take it. Conflicts are checked before, not after, an offer.
- Recurring vs. episodic. Annuity-style work supports a confident projection; deal- or matter-driven revenue is discounted accordingly.
- WIP and A/R. The LPQ asks for work-in-progress and receivables on portable clients, including amounts aged past 60 days — old A/R is a quality signal.
Portable, controlled work
Clients who follow you, where you are the genuine relationship owner and the work can transition cleanly — the only bucket truly portable.
ABA / NALP lateral-hiring frameworks ↗Lower portabilityHigher portability
Why the same partner's book ports differently depending on what they do — an ordinal spectrum, not a measured figure
- Institutional, team-basedAntitrust, large-cap M&A, regulatory — the client buys the platform and the team, not one name.
- Matter-driven, episodicRestructuring, litigation, one-off deals — work follows the mandate, not a standing relationship.
- Mixed institutional / individualBanking & finance, corporate — partly the firm, partly you; portability depends on who owns the relationship.
- Personal, relationship-ledTrusts & estates, owner-managed real estate, founder work — the client follows the individual.
How to present your book honestly
The instinct to round up is understandable and almost always counter-productive. Firms diligence these numbers, and a book that comes in well under the figure you quoted damages trust at exactly the moment compensation is being set. Present directional ranges you can defend — the LPQ itself usually asks for a minimum, a reasonably-expected and an optimistic first-year projection — distinguish controlled work from shared work explicitly, and let the multi-year history carry the argument. For how compensation tiers map to a credible book — and for the one hard, sourced data set we publish — see our BigLaw associate salary scale for 2026, which anchors the lower end of the pay structure a partner candidate is benchmarked against. Figures of this kind are directional, as of 2026, and vary by market, firm, sector and hours.
A firm is not buying your historical revenue — it is buying the revenue it can expect after you move.
Conflicts of interest: where most deals live or die
Before economics, before culture, before compensation — conflicts. A serious, unwaivable conflict ends a process regardless of how strong the book is, which is why the conflicts section must be complete and accurate.
The LPQ asks you to list the clients and matters you have worked on over the last three to five years, the adverse and related parties, and whether each client is portable — enough for the new firm to run a conflicts check. The tension is real: you must disclose enough to detect conflicts without breaching your duty of confidentiality to current and former clients. The profession has resolved this with a clear, tiered rule.
ABA Formal Opinion 09-455 and the 2012 codification at Model Rule 1.6(b)(7) permit a moving lawyer and a prospective firm to share conflicts information — but only once substantive discussions have begun, only as much as is reasonably necessary to detect and resolve conflicts, and never in a way that compromises the attorney-client privilege or prejudices a client. In practice that means disclosing client names first, then issues and non-client parties if names alone do not resolve it. Client consent is not required for this limited disclosure, and the recipient may not use the information for any other purpose.
If a conflict surfaces, the firm has three options under Model Rule 1.10: obtain a written waiver from the affected client, screen the incoming lawyer under Rule 1.10(a)(2) — timely screening, prompt written notice to the former client, and certifications of compliance — or, where neither works, decline the matter or the hire. The UK is stricter: under the SRA rules an information barrier does not cure a conflict, so a screen alone will not let a UK firm act.
A conflict is identified on the LPQ. What happens next?
- Waive Written client waiver The affected client consents in writing — available for consentable conflicts, not for directly adverse representation in the same matter.
- Screen Rule 1.10(a)(2) screen Timely screen + prompt written notice to the former client + certifications of compliance. Permitted in the US; a screen does not cure a conflict under SRA rules.
- Stop Decline the matter or the hire An unwaivable, unscreenable conflict ends the process regardless of the book — “good luck sourcing a waiver if you are adverse to a major client.”
An unwaivable conflict ends a process regardless of how strong the book is.
Compensation, capital and the financial terms section
The compensation section feeds the committee that decides where you sit in the firm’s pay system. It is also where equity and non-equity economics diverge sharply — the same title, very different terms.
The LPQ asks you to set out your current compensation structure and a multi-year history. The format depends on your status: a non-equity or income partner reports a base or guarantee plus bonus; an equity partner reports a monthly draw plus distributions plus bonus. Firms commonly request supporting W-2 or K-1 documentation later in the process, and they ask about paid-in capital and the schedule for its return when you leave — because capital you cannot retrieve quickly is a real cost of moving, and capital you must contribute at the new firm is a real cost of joining.
The distinction the section is really probing is equity versus non-equity. An equity partner shares profit, contributes capital, carries receivables risk and takes distributions on a schedule with holdbacks. A non-equity or income partner typically receives a cleaner salary-and-bonus package, no capital obligation, and no real profit upside. Two partners with the same nominal pay can have very different net economics — which is why the LPQ separates the components rather than asking for a single number, and why a candidate should know exactly which tier an offer is for before treating a headline figure as their pay.
| What the LPQ asks | Equity partner | Non-equity / income partner | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|---|
| Compensation structure | Draw + distribution + bonus | Base / guarantee + bonus | Sets the comparison basis for the offer |
| Multi-year history | Distributions vary with firm profit | Salary largely fixed | Shows trajectory and volatility |
| Capital contribution | Required; tied up while you stay | Usually none | A cost of joining the new firm |
| Return of capital | On a schedule after departure | Not applicable | Affects the economics and timing of leaving |
| Profit / upside | Shares firm profit | No real upside | Determines whether “partner” means ownership |
| Supporting documents | K-1 | W-2 | Verification of the reported figures |
Lateral compensation is generally negotiated against the credibility of the portable book, often with a guarantee for the first period — which is precisely why the financial and book sections are verified so hard. For how the headline numbers actually work at the top of the market, and why “profits per partner” is not partner pay, see our companion benchmark on what partners really make at the top 50 Am Law firms.
Restrictive covenants, notice and transition
A US firm generally cannot stop a partner from competing — but notice, capital and client-transition rules still shape the timing of a move. UK and other SRA-regulated partners face a much heavier set of restrictions.
The headline rule in the US is permissive. ABA Model Rule 5.6 prohibits agreements that restrict a lawyer’s right to practice after leaving a firm, with a narrow exception for retirement benefits. The rationale is the client’s, not the lawyer’s: a non-compete “limits the freedom of clients to choose a lawyer,” and almost every US state has adopted the rule. So the traditional employment non-compete simply does not exist for partners in most US jurisdictions.
What still binds a departing US partner is narrower but real: the contractual notice period (commonly 30–90 days), the return-of-capital schedule, and — in some jurisdictions — forfeiture of deferred compensation if you leave to compete. The courts are split on that last point: the Cohen v. Lord, Day & Lord line (New York, Illinois, and others) voids forfeiture-for-competition as an indirect restriction, while the Howard v. Babcock line (California, Arizona) permits a reasonable financial disincentive as a “tax” on taking the firm’s clients. And client transition is governed by ethics, not contract: ABA Formal Opinion 99-414 favors joint client notice, bars pre-departure in-person solicitation of clients with whom you have no relationship, and makes the client’s right to choose counsel paramount.
The UK picture is almost the inverse, and a single global LPQ cannot treat the two regimes the same. Under the SRA Standards and Regulations, partners and LLP members commonly face 6-to-12-month notice periods, enforceable garden leave (where the LLP deed grants it), and post-termination covenants that courts will enforce against partners — the leading case, Bridge v Deacons, upheld a covenant barring a departing equity partner from acting for the firm’s clients, on the reasoning that partners share in goodwill and have equal bargaining power. UK partners also carry SRA good-standing and serious-breach reporting obligations. A UK LPQ therefore weighs the candidate’s LLP-deed terms far more heavily than a US one.
Permissive by rule: no lawyer non-competes. The constraints are notice, capital and client-transition ethics.
| Restriction | US position |
|---|---|
| Non-compete on practice | Prohibited — Model Rule 5.6 (retirement-benefit exception) |
| Notice period | Contractual, commonly 30–90 days |
| Garden leave | Largely undeveloped — the underlying restraint is void |
| Deferred-comp forfeiture for competing | Split: Cohen (void) vs Howard (reasonable forfeiture allowed) |
| Client transition | ABA Op. 99-414 — joint notice preferred, client chooses |
| Capital | Returned on a schedule after departure |
Restrictive by rule: long notice and enforceable covenants against partners. The LLP deed does the work.
| Restriction | UK position |
|---|---|
| Non-compete / covenants | Enforceable against partners if reasonable — Bridge v Deacons |
| Notice period | Long — commonly 6 to 12 months for equity partners |
| Garden leave | Enforceable where the LLP deed grants it |
| Non-solicitation / non-dealing | Enforceable for a limited, reasonable period |
| Conflicts screen | Does not cure a conflict under SRA rules |
| Regulatory disclosure | SRA good-standing + serious-breach reporting duties |
A US firm cannot stop you competing. A UK firm, within reason, can.
The LPQ reads differently from each side of the table.
A candidate completes it to win an offer; a committee reads it to underwrite a hire. Switch sides — the same document, two jobs.
Complete it for the audience that actually reads it. Accurate, well-organized answers are the version of you the decision-makers will rely on.
| What you do | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| Begin gathering collections and origination data early | Pulling multi-year figures from your firm’s systems takes several focused sessions |
| Separate controlled work from shared work explicitly | Only controlled work is truly portable; conflating the two invites scrutiny |
| Present directional ranges you can defend | A book that comes in under your quote damages trust as comp is set |
| Disclose disciplinary history, claims and prior departures candidly | Non-disclosure that later surfaces is worse than the underlying item |
| Protect privileged client information and identities you must protect | Describe your economics accurately while staying inside professional-conduct duties |
| Never hand over your current firm’s proprietary printouts | Removing firm data can breach fiduciary and trade-secret duties |
| Complete it after private interest is established, not before | The LPQ is a diligence instrument, not a first-contact document |
A completed LPQ stops being a form and becomes the basis of a structured review. Each committee looks at the same document for a different reason.
| What the firm checks | Hard question |
|---|---|
| Conflicts | Does a serious, unwaivable conflict end this regardless of the book? |
| Relationship ownership | Who does the client call first — and whose judgment do they buy? |
| Multi-year collections | Is there a consistent record, or one strong year masking a single matter? |
| Concentration | Is the book fragile because it is mostly one client? |
| Realization & write-offs | Do billings actually collect, or leak through discounts and write-offs? |
| Professional conduct | Was anything omitted that diligence will later surface? |
| Covenants & notice | What restricts the move, and how long until the book can actually transfer? |
| Compensation fit | Where would this partner sit in the firm’s compensation system? |
How firms diligence the LPQ
Once your questionnaire is in, it stops being a form and becomes the basis of a structured review. Knowing the path it travels helps you complete it for the audience that actually reads it.
- Gate 1 Conflicts clearance Runs first. A serious, unwaivable conflict can end a process regardless of how strong the book is.
- Gate 2 Financial verification Finance checks originations, billings and collections for internal consistency and against thresholds; probes concentration and realization.
- Gate 3 Conduct & references Bar standing, disclosures and references are verified. Anything omitted that later surfaces is treated as a judgment problem.
- Gate 4 Partnership & comp review Committees weigh strategic fit, the credibility of the portable book, and where you would sit in the compensation system.
The LPQ itself is often bifurcated: a short first part is shared after early meetings to confirm there are no “deal killers,” and the full, sensitive part is required only when an offer is on the horizon. A completed LPQ then moves through several gates inside the firm, each looking at the same document for a different reason:
- Conflicts clearance first. The conflicts team runs your client and adverse-party list, and the firm performs its own independent check. A serious, unwaivable conflict can end a process regardless of how strong the book is — which is why this section must be complete and accurate.
- Financial verification. Finance reviews your originations, billings and collections for internal consistency and against the firm’s economic thresholds, and will probe concentration and realization — because the claimed-versus-verified gap is large.
- Professional-conduct and reference checks. Bar standing, disclosures and references are verified, usually with your consent and later in the process. Anything omitted that later surfaces is treated as a judgment problem, not just a fact problem.
- Partnership and compensation review. The relevant committees weigh strategic fit, the credibility of the portable book, the restrictions on the move, and where you would sit in the firm’s compensation system before a vote.
The throughline is verification, and the stakes are why. ALM Intelligence has reported that roughly half of laterals leave within five years, two-thirds miss 75% of their expected book, and the average cost of a lateral approaches $1.7 million; ABA-published commentary puts the share who underperform or leave within five years at 50–60%. A failed lateral can cost a multiple of the lawyer’s annual compensation. That is the strongest practical argument for completing the questionnaire candidly and precisely the first time: it is the version of you the decision-makers will rely on, and the one diligence will test.
Diligence is also only half the job — integration is the other. The NALP framework treats onboarding and client transition as distinct stages, and research consistently finds integration is the single biggest predictor of whether a lateral succeeds. For the wider picture of how lateral moves are sourced, sequenced and closed in the current market, read our overview of lateral partner hiring.
Everything material on an LPQ is checkable, and reputable firms check it.
Download a standard LPQ template
We have built a clean, branded, standard Lateral Partner Questionnaire you can download and use — covering all ten sections above, with the actual fields, tables and prompts a firm would put in front of you.
Opens a download. No sign-up required.
Where this guidance comes from
We benchmark lateral processes against the recognized US and UK references and publicly reported statistics rather than invented figures. These are the sources that inform our work and that candidates and firms should consult directly.
Where this guidance comes from
10 references- ABA Model Rule 5.6 — restrictions on the right to practice americanbar.org ↗
- ABA Model Rule 1.10 — imputation of conflicts & lateral screening americanbar.org ↗
- ABA Formal Opinion 09-455 — disclosing conflicts information when lawyers move americanbar.org ↗
- ABA Formal Opinion 99-414 — ethical obligations when a lawyer changes firms americanbar.org ↗
- NALP — lateral partner integration framework nalp.org ↗
- NALSC — the Universal Lateral Partner Questionnaire (U-LPQ) nalsc.org ↗
- SRA Standards and Regulations — conflicts & reporting (UK) sra.org.uk ↗
- Thomson Reuters Institute — lateral hires bring ~22% of their book thomsonreuters.com ↗
- ABA Journal — lateral hiring economics & failure rates (ALM Intelligence) abajournal.com ↗
- ABA Law Practice Magazine — financial & political risks of lateral hiring americanbar.org ↗
We publish no invented origination or collection figures. The portability and lateral-failure statistics on this page are publicly reported figures, each with a live URL above, and are directional and as of their cited year — they vary by market, firm, sector and practice. Where this guide refers to compensation, the one hard, sourced data set we maintain is our BigLaw associate salary scale for 2026. The downloadable template is a neutral framework, not legal advice; consult your own bar’s rules of professional conduct.
Lateral Partner Questionnaire: common questions
What is a Lateral Partner Questionnaire?
The Lateral Partner Questionnaire (LPQ) is the standardized form a law firm asks a partner candidate to complete during the recruiting process. It captures the information the firm needs to evaluate the move on the merits — candidate and practice profile, conflicts data, a financial history of originations, billings and collections, the portable book of business, compensation and capital, professional-conduct disclosures, restrictive covenants and notice, and references — in a structure the firm’s conflicts, finance, compensation and partnership committees can compare against other candidates and against the firm’s own thresholds. Recruiters describe it as the single most important document in the lateral process.
What sections does a standard LPQ contain?
Forms vary, but a standard LPQ moves through roughly ten areas: candidate & practice profile; professional history; book of business & portable revenue (originations, billings, collections, realization, projections); client & matter detail; conflicts of interest; compensation, capital & financial terms; team and business-development support; professional-conduct disclosures; restrictive covenants and notice; and references. The widely referenced ABA, NALP and NALSC frameworks shape this structure — the NALSC “Universal LPQ” (U-LPQ) is designed to cover roughly 80% of what most firms ask.
How long is a typical LPQ and how long does it take to complete?
Individual-firm LPQs are commonly described as 10-to-25-page questionnaires covering three to five years of financial history and dozens of subject areas; some are short, others have been likened to “War and Peace.” Most candidates need several focused sessions — the task cannot be delegated — and often need help pulling collections and origination figures from their current firm’s systems, so it is wise to begin gathering data early rather than treating the LPQ as a last-minute formality.
What is a ‘portable book of business’ and how is it tested?
Portable business is the client work a partner can realistically bring to a new firm, as distinct from work that stays with the current firm, an institutional team, or a relationship the partner does not actually control. Firms pressure-test portability by asking who the true relationship owner is, the multi-year collections history of each client, whether there are conflicts at the new firm, and whether the work is recurring or one-off. The gap is large and well documented: the Thomson Reuters Institute reports laterals bring on average only about 22% of their book, and ALM Intelligence has found roughly two-thirds of laterals do not come within 75% of their expected book. Directional, defensible numbers beat optimistic ones.
Can a US law firm enforce a non-compete against a departing partner?
Generally no. ABA Model Rule 5.6 prohibits agreements that restrict a lawyer’s right to practice after leaving a firm, with a narrow exception for retirement benefits — the rule exists to protect a client’s freedom to choose counsel. What still binds a departing US partner is the contractual notice period, the return-of-capital schedule, and, in some jurisdictions, forfeiture of deferred compensation if you compete (the courts are split on this, the Cohen v. Lord, Day & Lord line versus Howard v. Babcock). UK and other SRA-regulated partners face a materially heavier profile: longer notice, garden leave, and post-termination covenants that courts will enforce against partners (Bridge v Deacons).
Do I have to disclose disciplinary history, malpractice claims, or prior departures?
Yes. LPQs ask about bar standing, disciplinary matters, malpractice claims, investigations and the circumstances of prior departures precisely so the firm can assess them openly. Non-disclosure that later surfaces during diligence is far more damaging than the underlying item itself — and disclosure here is unreliable: a meaningful share of LPQs come back incomplete or without full disclosure of the book. The right approach is candid, contextualized disclosure handled early in the process.
Should I complete an LPQ before or after meeting the firm?
Usually after initial, private conversations establish mutual interest and fit — commonly after the second, third or fourth round of meetings, or just before an offer. The LPQ is a diligence instrument, not a first-contact document; sharing detailed financials before there is genuine, two-sided interest exposes sensitive data for little benefit. You should also never hand over your current firm’s proprietary printouts or privileged client information. Sequencing those conversations correctly is part of what a specialist recruiter manages.
Keep reading
Where this guide connects across the practice — for partners weighing a move and for firms running a lateral search.
For Partner Candidates
How we manage a lateral move end to end, from first conversation to a credible portable-book conversation.
For partners considering a moveLateral Partner Recruiting
Our search practice for law firms hiring laterals and lifting out practice groups — market-mapped and conflicts-aware.
Explore partner & lateral recruitingLateral Partner Hiring
The wider market view: how lateral moves are sourced, sequenced and closed, and what the LPQ fits into.
Read the lateral hiring overviewWhat Partners Really Make: Am Law Top 50
Why profits per partner is not partner pay, and what equity, non-equity and guarantee economics really look like.
Read the partner-pay benchmarkLateral Partner Due-Diligence Questions
The questions a candidate should ask the firm — the other side of the diligence that the LPQ runs on you.
See the diligence questionsConflicts of Interest in Lateral Moves
A closer look at the first gate: how conflicts are run, screened, waived, and why they end deals.
Read the conflicts guidePrivate by default
Considering a lateral move? Start with a private conversation.
We help partners frame a practice, present a defensible book of business, and navigate the LPQ inside their professional obligations — and we help firms run the diligence rigorously. No obligation.