But if you’re like me, you may not even notice those types of “star” lateral stories. You may never notice any of these news items – until, of course, you are made responsible for analyzing your competitor’s antitrust practice. Or you need to build your own securities litigation practice, and want to find out who’s been moving where in the last few years. Or you’re a headhunter and want to analyze the lateral churn in your client firm to get a sense of how much of that business you’ve been getting. Or …

Well, you can’t be expected to keep track of all this deck shuffling yourself. It’s hard enough for us. However, ALM Research Online does have a database of information about lateral partner moves, culled from all of our publications as well as general sources and press releases from the firms themselves. The data includes the lawyer’s name, practice area, and position; the month and year of the move; the firm or organization the lawyer moved to and from, and the location of each. The information goes back to 2000.

To access it, choose “Topics” from the horizontal menu bar at the top of the home page, and then “Laterals” from the left-hand sidebar. You will be prompted to identify the firm(s) and year(s) that you want to include.

A Report of the current year’s moves (137 lateral partner moves in and out of Am Law 200 firms in the 2006 report) is also available in spreadsheet format. It is free for subscribers, and can be purchased on a transaction basis by non-subscribers. On the home page, choose “click here” in the Lists & Rankings section. You will be directed to a page with a variety of spreadsheets products. Choose the “2006 Lateral Partner Moves” report.

In addition, if you purchase an individual Law Firm Report (free to subscribers), information about the firm’s lateral partner moves will be included in the report, as will the firm’s own press releases about lateral associate hires.