Welcome back to the Big Law Business column . I’m Roy Strom, and today we look at first-year hiring trends at Big Law firms. Sign up for Business & Practice , a free morning newsletter from Bloomberg Law. The country’s largest law firms last year hired fewer law school graduates for the first time since 2011, which could set the stage for a deeper plunge in hiring this year and next. That is the conclusion suggested by historical trends — and there’s a new culprit. Law firms’ own expectations of how artificial intelligence will impact their rosters is also driving hiring uncertainty. Last year, firms with more than 500 lawyers hired 6,588 new graduates, down 538, or 7.5%, from the 2024 peak, according to data released last month from the National Association for Law Placement, which has tracked law school hiring for decades. The group’s historical data shows a clear pattern dating to the 1980s. Once NALP’s largest group of firms has its hiring peak, incoming class sizes bottom out three years later. That’s what happened after each of the last three peak hiring years, which coincided with US recessions: 1990, 2001, and 2008. Of course, history isn’t bound to repeat itself. And there is an important distinction about 2024: There was not a recession. Law firms performed well last year and have been billing clients at a blistering pace this year. But firms also expect the historical trend to occur once again. Two-thirds of large firms predict they will have fewer first-year associates in 2028 compared to 2025, according to a survey of 57 large firms conducted by Citi’s law firm banking group this summer. Nearly 60% expect they will have fewer second-year associates in 2028 than 2025, indicating two straight years of entry-level hiring declines. “The pattern is showing the majority of large firms will have smaller first- and second-year associate populations,” said Gretta Rusanow, head of advisory services at Citi’s law firm group. NALP has also said that Big Law’s second-year summer associate classes declined in 2024 and 2025 to their lowest levels since 2020, when firms scaled back during the pandemic. The group notes summer class sizes are one of the clearest predictors of future first-year hiring. The biggest question for law students is how deep the cuts to first-year classes will be. Historical data suggest there is plenty of room to fall. Data from the last three recession eras show that the first year of hiring declines is relatively small. By the second year of declines, Big Law’s share of graduating law school students falls by 23% from its peak. By year three, the decline grows to about 30% on average. (One caveat on the numbers. Due to a 2007 change in NALP’s methodology, the 2008 data pertain to hiring by firms of more than 500 lawyers. The 1990 and 2001 data is based on hiring by firms of more than 100 lawyers.) Holding the number of law school graduates constant, this historical model suggests Big Law firms will be hiring about 2,000 fewer new lawyers this year compared to 2024. The slide then claims another 500 positions between 2024 and 2027. Now, that’s just a historical model. It is of course impossible to know what will happen over the next couple of years. There’s a case to be made that the decline will be less severe than historical trends would indicate. Last week, I wrote about how demand for lawyer time is surging even as artificial intelligence adoption ramps up. If that dynamic continues, law firms may not want to throttle down new-lawyer hiring. AI maximalists, though, may argue the coming decline will be starker — or more persistent — than the recession-era dips. What’s clear is that today’s hiring decline is not like those of the past. This one is being driven by the introduction of a new technology; it’s not a gut-check response to a deteriorating economy. When law firms say they plan to hire fewer first-year lawyers, they are highlighting their own uncertainty about their business model in the age of AI. It’s not clear how quickly clarity will arrive. When asked about their first-year hiring in 2028, 19% of firms responded they don’t know, Rusanow said. “The further out I look,” she said, “the greater the level of uncertainty about what their needs are going to be.” Worth Your Time On Kirkland: The firm added 64 associates across its Texas offices on Tuesday, giving it the largest legal presence in the state just more than a decade after launching there, Eric Killelea reports . On Simpson Thacher: The firm’s hiring of a group of Weil Gotshal partners shows it flexing its opportunistic hiring muscle , which has become increasingly important as the lateral market intensifies. On a Plaintiffs’ Firm: Labaton Keller Sucharow is picking up a pair of former top Securities and Exchange Commission officials to relaunch its whistleblower representation practice, Meghan Tribe reports . That’s it for this week! Thanks for reading and please send me your thoughts, critiques, and tips. Learn more about Bloomberg Law or Log In to keep reading: See Breaking News in Context Bloomberg Law provides trusted coverage of current events enhanced with legal analysis. Learn more Already a subscriber? Log in to keep reading or access research tools and resources. Log In © 2026 Bloomberg Industry Group, Inc. 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