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2025 saw one of the largest migrations of government lawyers into private practice in recent memory—a wave large enough that its fingerprints are now showing up in places you wouldn't expect, including inside Vault's own associate survey. The exodus itself is cooling, but the market isn't reverting to how it was before. This year's rankings are proof of that.
A Five-Year High Fueled by an Exodus
According to BCG Attorney Search's 2026 Legal Talent Movement & Law Firm Headcount Report, 2025 saw 3,009 lateral partner hires—the highest level in five years. Of those, 9% came from government agencies, which the report describes as reflecting "a significant exodus of federal lawyers following the change in administration." That's almost one in ten of the most senior lateral moves in the industry.
Why It Happened
BCG's account states that "Thousands of federal attorneys—particularly from the DOJ, regulatory agencies, and enforcement divisions—transitioned to law firms" over the course of 2025, a shift that reporting from JDJournal attributes to "policy shifts, budget uncertainties, and political dynamics following the 2024 election." Firms, for their part, "aggressively" recruited these experienced lawyers with regulatory, white-collar, and enforcement backgrounds.
Nowhere felt this more than Washington, D.C., which the same report calls out as experiencing "the most dramatic shift of any major legal market in 2025." There are two interesting, countervailing pressures generated by this move. On the one hand, firms have staffed up with experienced lawyers in these departments; on the other hand, the exodus itself was in large part prompted by changing priorities and a significant overall reduction in government regulatory and enforcement activity in turn reducing the actual demand for regulatory compliance practices. The net result of these pressures remains to be seen.
Why the Exodus Is Already Slowing
None of this means 2026 will look like 2025. BCG expects "continued movement of government lawyers, though at slower pace than 2025 exodus." Shocks with an identifiable trigger like this one don't reproduce themselves on an annual cycle. The population of government lawyers positioned to make this move, in this window, was always going to shrink.
For anyone in government practice weighing a move into private white-collar or investigations work, the implication is about timing and positioning. Moving now means competing in a market that already absorbed the earliest wave of talent—the associates and partners who moved in 2025 got there first, and the remaining opportunities will likely reward specific subspecialty experience over general government pedigree. BCG's own compensation data ties White Collar/Investigations partner pay directly to this dynamic, citing a range of $1.5 million to $3.2 million and attributing it to the opportunities the exodus created.
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