Categories
- AI
- Business Development & Marketing
- Candidates
- Clients
- Diversity & Inclusion in Law
- In-House
- Innovation
- Job Search & Career Development
- Law Firms
- Legal Hiring Trends & Market Insights
- Legal Recruiting Insights
- Legal Tech
- Market Insights
- Marketing Intelligence
- Newsletter
- Resources and Tips
- Workplace Wellness
The Era of Lawyer Loyalty Is Over: Why the Free Agency Model Is the New BigLaw Standard
The implicit contract between law firms and their attorneys has broken down. With associate attrition at nineteen percent and Wachtell losing nine partners in under two years, the legal market has permanently reframed attorney mobility as professional strategy. Here is what the data says, and what it means for your next career decision.
A Raise Announcement Is Not the Whole Story: Decoding BigLaw Compensation
Milbank rewrote the associate salary scale in June 2026, and firms raced to match it. A headline announcement and money in your account are two different things. At least one firm announced it was joining the salary race and then quietly froze those raises until 2027. Here is how to read a compensation announcement before making any career decisions.
BigLaw Is Structurally Changing How It Hires: The Shift From Building to Buying Talent
For the first time in modern legal history, lateral associate hiring has outpaced entry-level hiring, with 3,296 laterals versus 3,039 law school hires in 2025. BigLaw has made its decision. Firms are filling their talent pipelines through the open market rather than building from the bottom up, and that structural shift carries major implications for attorneys who know how to read it.
What Law Firm BD Programs Get Wrong - And What It Costs in the Lateral Market
Most law firms don't fail at business development because attorneys resist growth. They fail because the systems they build quietly teach attorneys to avoid it. Here is what that looks like from the lateral market side of the conversation.
The Legal Tech Hiring Problem Nobody Wants to Admit
Law firms are competing for a very small group of people who have both technical fluency and real law firm experience. The internal pipeline most firms never built is now the one everyone is chasing, and the traditional recruiting approach is not going to close that gap.