Lateral-Hire ROI Calculator

A Corporate / M&A income partner candidate is in late-stage conversation
with the firm. The candidate represents themselves as bringing a sizeable
self-originated book, weighted heavily toward two long-tenured clients.
Career runway is comfortably long. The compensation package on the table
is mid-eight-figures over three years on a cash basis plus a meaningful
signing bonus, with a guaranteed-bonus floor and a standard benefits load.

Open questions the comp committee wants stress-tested before the next
session:

  - Is the asking package defensible given a realistic, not stated, book
    transition? The committee has heard stories from peer firms about
    laterals bringing materially less than promised and is no longer
    willing to underwrite stated-book numbers at face value.

  - What share of the stated book does the candidate actually need to
    move for the deal to net positive over three years?

  - How does the picture change if realization on the inherited matters
    runs at the firm's typical 90–92% rather than the candidate's
    stated 95%+?

  - Two flagged concerns from the recruiter's diligence summary need
    to be reflected in the model: (1) the book is highly concentrated
    in the candidate's top two clients, and (2) there are no written
    client commitments to follow.

  - What downside protection — clawback, sliding scale, attestation —
    is appropriate given the answers above?

No candidate name, current firm, or client identifiers are entered.
Inputs to the calculator are role-level: seniority, practice, the
economic terms on the table, and the diligence-flagged risks. The
committee wants a one-page memo it can review in fifteen minutes and
discuss in another twenty.

Produced a one-page committee pre-read. 

Headline finding on the page: the deal requires the candidate to transition a notably
higher share of the stated book than the published industry median, just
to net positive over three years. 

The two diligence-flagged risks (client concentration, no written commitments) materially shifted the required share upward — the calculator surfaced what the required share would have been without those flags, so the committee can see how much
of the gap is candidate-attributable versus structural.

The three-scenario view showed the expected case sitting close to
break-even, the low case meaningfully negative, and the high case
positive but not transformative. The probability-weighted view came in
slightly negative under the committee's own probability weights, and the
calculator reported the share of scenario probability that produces a
net loss. Both numbers are footnoted to the published research the
defaults are calibrated against, with source citations visible on the
printed page.

The sensitivity view — how the three-year picture moves as the actual
transition rate and the realization rate vary independently — let the
committee see at a glance where the deal turns from red to green. The
committee identified the cell that matched their honest believed-likely
outcome and the cell that matched their downside, and confirmed the
downside cell was materially negative.

A short framing section at the bottom of the page reminded the
committee what the calculator does not tell them: whether this
specific candidate will be in the top half of laterals, whether
references support the stated book, whether work-product samples
look strong, and whether bar-clearance and conflicts review have
landed. The page closed with a structural-protection menu (clawback,
sliding-scale guarantee tied to realized book at month twelve, named-
client attestation) keyed to the magnitude of the gap the calculator
found.

The committee chair printed the page to PDF for the packet and moved
to the next agenda item. Total time in the calculator: under fifteen
minutes.

Outputs require professional review. Industry benchmarks are
aggregates; the calculator is a structured stress-test, not a
prediction of any individual candidate's outcome.