Biglaw Firms Are Continuing To Grow Amid Dropping Demand Because Associates Aren’t Quitting

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Not so fast…

Ed. note: Welcome to our daily feature, Quote of the Day.

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I think it’s that they see their strength and they’re recruiting for areas that do have growth, and they just haven’t reduced in areas they haven’t seen growth. It’s not a decision overall to say, ‘We wanna continue to grow head count.’

[Many firms are] relying on some natural attrition, and it’s not coming along as fast as they’d like. The transactional associates are staying on when they might have otherwise chosen to leave voluntarily. At the same time, they do have to hire in other areas. So it’s kind of a mismatch in skill sets, and they’re not interchangeable.

— Owen Burman, managing director for Wells Fargo Legal Group, in comments given to the American Lawyer on law firms’ recent growth in head count. In 2022, Am Law 100 firms grew head count by 4.3% on average, with a median of about 923 lawyers, while in 2021, the median was 880.

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Staci Zaretsky is a senior editor at Above the Law, where she’s worked since 2011. She’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email her with any tips, questions, comments, or critiques. You can follow her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.

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Associate Attrition, Biglaw, Headcount, Quote of the Day