Representation for BigLaw's Leading Partners
Every deal you have ever negotiated for a client had advisers on both sides of the table. Your own career never has.
I am Tariq Sheikh. I represent law firm partners - the way agents represent elite athletes. Confidentially, by invitation, for partners and teams generating $5M to $100M a year.
Representation by application only.
01 / The Recognition
You already know the numbers.
You know what you billed last year. You know what you collected. You know what came home in your draw, and you know - because you are precise about these things - the size of the gap between the two.
Your compensation was decided by a committee, in a room you were not in, using a formula you have learned to live with. You generated more than most of the people in that room. You said nothing, because saying something is not how it is done.
Twice a week, a legal recruiter calls. The call is never about you. It is about a vacancy - their client's opening, their fee, their timeline. You stopped taking the calls years ago.
And underneath the fee targets and the client dinners sits a question you have never had properly answered: what is my practice actually worth? Not the flattery version. Not the number a recruiter quotes to get you on the phone. The real figure - tested quietly, against the right firms, by someone with the authority to negotiate it and no vacancy to fill.
That is what I do.
02 / The Model
The old way: a recruiter calls you about a job.
The new way: an agent calls firms about you.
Footballers have agents. Actors have agents. Authors have agents. Fund managers have placement advisers, and the chief executive of every company you have ever advised had a team behind their own contract.
The partners who generate the most revenue in the legal profession negotiate alone. The last unrepresented elite in the world.
When a partner engages me, the mandate is singular: establish what the practice is worth, identify the platforms where it is worth most, and negotiate the terms - economics, equity, team, protections - before you have sat through a single interview. You give me the authority to act on your behalf. I use it the way the representative of any elite performer uses it: to make the market come to you.
I negotiate the deal before the interview. The interview becomes a conversation between principals.
03 / The Difference
This is not recruitment.
I do not work live vacancies. I do not have clients whose openings need filling. The recruiter answers to the firm with the opening. I answer to you.
The distinction holds at every point. A recruiter's interest ends at the placement. A representative's interest is the full arc of your terms - the year-one economics, the equity trajectory, the platform commitments, the team, the protections that decide whether a move compounds or stalls.
I take on a small number of partners at a time. In any given year, I decline more than I represent. Not because the practices are weak - because representation done properly is intensive, and a roster beyond a certain size is a roster being neglected.
04 / Who
Who I represent.
Partners and practice groups generating between $5 million and $100 million in annual revenue - across London, New York, Hong Kong, Singapore, Dubai and Riyadh. Private equity, funds, M&A, disputes, restructuring, and the practices adjacent to them: the work the elite firms are competing hardest to acquire.
A single partner with a portable book. A team of five moving as one unit. A practice group that has outgrown its platform. The model is the same: I represent the talent, and the market responds accordingly.
If that is you, you have likely never had anyone in your corner.
That is the point of this page.
05 / The Process
Built so that nothing leaks.
Everything begins with a private conversation. No CV. No forms. No database. You tell me about the practice; I tell you what I see in the market. If we go no further, the conversation never happened.
If we proceed, I value the practice the way an acquirer would - revenue quality, client portability, team economics, platform fit. You see the analysis before anyone else does.
Then, with your authority and only with it, I test the market. Anonymously at first: a practice profile, never a name. Firms commit interest before they learn who you are. Your name enters the room last - after the terms have taken shape.
At no point does your current firm know. That is not a reassurance. It is the architecture of the entire process.
06 / The Agent
Tariq Sheikh.
I have spent nearly thirty years in the legal market. Every one of them taught me the same uncomfortable truth: the partners who generate the most are represented the least.
I built this practice on that conviction - that BigLaw's leading partners should hold the leverage their practices have earned, and that someone should be unafraid to act on it.
I publish on legal economics, partner compensation, and the restructuring of BigLaw as AI reshapes the profession. The archive is here - read it before you decide whether to write to me. It is the fastest way to know whether I see the market the way you need it seen.
07 / The Door
What is your practice worth?
If you want the real answer, write to me directly. Tell me as much or as little as you choose.
Every conversation is private. Every engagement is by invitation. Your firm will never know we spoke.
One field. A message. Nothing else to fill in.