We at Law.com regard ourselves as business, rather than 'legal', journalists. Yes, maybe that is a little highfalutin, but it helps us zero in on our overarching goal: to bring our audience essential stories on the inner workings of the world's largest law firms.

But when folks less familiar with the industry—interviewees, fellow hacks, my mum—ask us why we do so many stories about 'people moves', it reminds me that there are certain things peculiar to our industry that perhaps wouldn't resonate with readers of news about, say, the pharma or retail industries.

So I'd formulated a stock answer that goes a little something like this: It's not just about a person going from A to B, mum. Partner moves reflect a shift in market share, sometimes key clients trading allegiances, often a migration of multiple fee earners and possibly millions of dollars of potential revenue going from one business to another. If there's time, I'll add: These 'moves' can have huge consequences for how a firm's partnership and remuneration is structured, how profits are distributed, how a firm is viewed by clients and competitors and, ultimately, for the firm's wider working culture.

This was a reality that came starkly to life for Latham & Watkins this week, when a handful of high profile partners exited the firm's U.K. and Germany bases in the same week.

First, Frankfurt was hit when arch-rival Kirkland & Ellis came for M&A partner Tobias Larisch. By some accounts, it is a significant, potentially destabilizing, hire.

Then, just days later, the firm faced a two-team exit in London: a six-strong alternative investments team, led by partner Alex Martin, walked to Milbank; then, even more devastatingly, a few days later a five-partner team led by rainmaking partner Jayanthi Sadanandan and Sam Hamilton, left for Sidley Austin. 

Sadanandan's exit in particular might have had the firm's leaders "panicking", as one source told me. Indeed, earlier this year, Sadanandan was cited by multiple sources as one of a select few corporate lawyers in London with 'designation' power, exerting an outsized influence on the most lucrative debt finance mandates in London—a 'kingmaker'.

Once she leaves, the firm will have a heck of a time convincing the market that it's business as usual.

Latham is hardly the first to lose major players in quick succession; they won't be the last. If the market of the past year has shown us anything, it's that no firm is impenetrable. Not Kirkland, not Latham. So what do firms do when star-led exits like those of the past week happen?

Two things: Plug the leak. Rebuild.

One expert source told me that it can get as serious as flying the management in from HQ. Then it's a case of sitting around a table with other potential flight risks and convincing them that they should stay rather than join their buddy or mentor who just walked.

"It's rarely just one and done," a second market source said when asked about high profile exits. "Star partners have deep roots, and when you pull those roots up, it affects everything around them, especially the practice they've just left."

Often this is the greatest test of a firm's collegiality: the flight risk might have the firm's name on their business card and website profile, but often their loyalty lies foremostly with their immediate team, not the rest of the partnership whose members he or she may have had limited contact with over the years.

"How do they keep them? Well, a lot of the time they won't," the second source said. "It changes the make-up of the practice [when you have a big name leaving], because often the rainmaker is the practice; the practice is built around them, their client relationships, around their know-how and 'know-who'."

The person said that the key is to "stop the fire from spreading".

"If you have your top guys coming over from New York or LA or wherever, you're showing the team that they matter. But sometimes it takes more than kind words and gestures and you need to break out the cheque book."

But "breaking out the cheque book" is a complicated business in the corporate legal sphere. Because, today, to remain competitive at the global elite level, you often need to confront the thorny issue of recalibrating how profits are distributed among the owners of your limited liability partnership (partners).

Earlier this summer, Latham had indicated that it was poised to introduce a super-pointer mechanism into its pay structure, enabling it to pay the highest performers with rates that exceed its established points-based pay system and, therefore, to compete with the $20 million-plus salaries on offer at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, Kirkland & Ellis and Simpson, Thacher & Bartlett. It has also been gradually growing the portion of profits reserved for bonuses to 15%, a high percentage to reserve from profits compared to other firms. But, despite these adjustments, Sadanadan and co still departed.

So it's likely that the firm will give particular emphasis to rebuilding.

It's a process that Latham will likely know well, having in 2022 lost a four-strong London senior finance team, led by the firm's global co-chair of banking Ross Anderson, to Paul Hastings.

But rebuild it did. For instance, it brought in two finance partners from U.S. rival Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld—Fergus Wheeler and Paul Yin in 2023, and this year hired Jonathan Brownson, Joydeep Choudhuri and Prue Criddle from Cahill Gordon & Reindel. Caveat: of course, we can't know if this is a like-for-like reconstruction without investigating the revenue and books of business leaving and coming in. 

Plugging a partner leak requires a sort of political deftness. And rebuilding takes time.

You need to be able to convince your partnership that retaining or hiring certain people warrants the effort of overhauling or augmenting your pay structure. And finding people who want to leave their current practice, and then convincing them that yours is the home they've been looking for, is an "art form" that many leaders haven't had a chance to refine.

Maybe Latham can trade notes with Kirkland, that other industry behemoth which was sensationally stung by partner raids last year.