Big Law is shrinking its talent pool at the entry level. Students are going to have a harder time landing positions than they did even a few years ago, first at the top schools, then at every successive notch down the law school prestige ladder. Here is what is actually happening inside the model, and what it means if you are a law student or a junior associate planning a career around it.
What the NALP data shows
NALP, the largest body that compiles hiring data from Big Law, recently flagged a set of trends that deserve more attention than they are getting. The headline is that leverage is changing fast. Leverage, in the law firm setting, is the ratio of equity partners to every other attorney at the firm. Equity partners run the firm and share in its profits. Everyone else, the non-equity partners, counsel, and associates, sits on the other side of that ratio.
Two things are happening at once. Firms are making fewer equity partners, which most people inside the industry already sensed. And they are growing the ranks of senior attorneys: counsel, non-equity partners, and senior associates. The hiring is happening at the top. It is no longer happening at the entry level, the junior level, or the mid-level.
From pyramid to cylinder
The traditional Big Law model is a pyramid. Massive summer classes feed massive entry-level classes, the mid-levels thin out, and intentional attrition narrows everything toward a small partnership at the top. What the data points to now is a cylinder. Firms are stopping the overhire at the base. Summer classes have been shrinking steadily across the industry, and entry-level classes are stagnant or shrinking at many firms.
The exception is the handful of megafirms still growing, the Lathams, Kirklands, and Simpson Thachers of the world. Those firms can afford big summer and entry classes because they run a machine large enough to absorb them. The shrinking is concentrated in the tier just below: Gibson Dunn has reduced its summer class, Cooley has reduced its summer class, and many other firms are quietly doing the same.
The structural shift
AI can already do much of the work of an entry-level attorney. It cannot yet do the work of a senior attorney or a partner. So firms are shrinking the bottom of the pyramid and buying experience on the lateral market when they need it. Talent that used to be stockpiled at the entry level is now picked off laterally, through recruiters, at exactly the seniority the firm needs.
Lateral hiring becomes the talent strategy
Here is how the new flow works. The behemoth firms keep their big entry classes, and their attrition stays high. When those associates leave, they move to the very strong firms a notch below, the Orricks, Fenwicks, Cooleys, and Greenberg Traurigs. Those firms know the downflow is coming, so they trim their own summer classes and rely on lateral hiring to fill the gaps with attorneys someone else already trained.
There is a financial motive layered on top. Reducing headcount and leverage juices profits per equity partner, and PPP is how the market scores a firm's success. Fewer bodies at the bottom makes the top line look stronger, and firm leadership knows it.
What it means for the JD classes of 2027 and 2028
The students entering firms over the next few years will feel the crunch first. NALP does not project it as fatal, and I agree. Most students at top schools will still land excellent Big Law jobs. The effect is a slow notch down the prestige ladder. Compensation will look identical, because Big Law pays lockstep salaries on the same scale at nearly every firm. The difference shows up in prestige: instead of Gibson Dunn, maybe you land at McDermott. As an associate your paycheck is the same. Over a career, the gap compounds.
And because the top students slide down a notch in the recruitment funnel, students at lower-ranked schools get squeezed hardest. The seamless pipeline that top-school students have enjoyed for a generation is going to have more friction at every level.
Where this goes
At some point firms will adjust the training model so that entry-level attorneys do the high-level, thought-intensive work that AI cannot, and the economics of junior talent will make sense again. I would not hold my breath. Big Law has never been good at training talent efficiently, and rebuilding that machinery will take years.
Fundamentally, I do not believe there is a real capability gap between a first-year and a third-year associate. The brain has the same horsepower. What the third-year has is training reps. Once firms figure out how to compress those reps, the recruiting model may loosen up again. For the next five to ten years, expect Big Law hiring to stay top-heavy.
Navigating a market that hires at the top?
Mosaic works with associates and counsel at every stage of the lateral market, and advises law students trying to read where the industry is going.
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