Large law firms are cutting back on entry-level associate hiring, and industry experts warn the trend is far from reaching its lowest point.
Hiring for the class of 2025 fell 7.5% compared with the class of 2024, a significant drop that has prompted concern across the legal industry.
The decline is not isolated to a single year but reflects a broader structural shift in how large law firms are planning their future workforces.
Gretta Rusanow, head of advisory services at Citi’s law firm group, provided comments to Bloomberg Law outlining the scale of the problem facing the sector.
“The pattern is showing the majority of large firms will have smaller first- and second-year associate populations,” Rusanow said, painting a sobering picture of the near-term hiring landscape.
She added that uncertainty compounds the challenge, saying: “The further out I look, the greater the level of uncertainty about what their needs are going to be.”
A recent Citi survey found that two-thirds of Biglaw firms expect to hire even fewer first-years in 2028 than they did in 2025.
That statistic signals that the pullback in junior associate recruitment is not a temporary adjustment but a sustained and deliberate strategic direction.
For law school graduates entering a highly competitive market, the shrinking pipeline of first-year positions at major firms creates significant pressure on career prospects.
The reduction in associate classes also raises questions about long-term succession planning within large firms, as smaller junior cohorts move up through the ranks.
Firms have increasingly turned to lateral hiring and, in some cases, legal technology to fill capacity gaps rather than expanding their entry-level pipelines.
The Citi data suggests that those alternative strategies are becoming more embedded in firm operations, rather than serving as short-term fixes during periods of economic uncertainty.
With two-thirds of major firms projecting further cuts over the next two years, the structural transformation of Biglaw hiring appears to be accelerating rather than stabilising.