At a time when legal doomsayers have been predicting the imminent replacement of junior associates by AI legal assistants, the law school graduating class of 2024 has delivered a contrary verdict: Human lawyers aren’t going anywhere just yet.
According to the latest American Bar Association employment report, the legal job market is showing not just resilience, but growth. The data, reported as of March 17, 2025 — approximately 10 months after spring graduations — reveals that 82.2% of the 38,937 2024 law school graduates secured positions requiring bar admission — a two-point increase from the previous year.
The total number of law graduates also increased, with 38,937 graduates in 2024 compared to 35,215 in 2023 — a robust 10.6% rise. Even with this larger pool of newly minted attorneys entering the market, employment outcomes improved, defying the laws of supply and demand.
Perhaps most telling is the 13.4% year-over-year increase in long-term, full-time positions requiring bar admission. It seems that while AI tools might help draft a contract or research a brief, there is still demand for someone who can sway a jury or negotiate a settlement over lunch.
See the full table of 2024 employment outcomes.
Counterintuitively to news out of Washington, government positions saw a 20.1% surge. While this would seem to suggest that the public sector is developing a healthy appetite for legal talent, it may be that some of this government hiring was reported before some of the more-recent government firing.
Law Firm Hiring Grows
Meanwhile, law firm employment grew by 13%, with nearly 54% of all graduates (20,983 lawyers) landing positions in firms ranging from solo practices to BigLaw behemoths. By contrast, only 186 graduates started their own solo practices, fewer than the 203 who did so in 2023.
However, while law firm jobs grew, not all sectors did. Business and industry positions declined by 3.5%, and so-called JD Advantage roles — positions where a law degree provides an edge but isn’t required — saw a dip of 1.7%.
The unemployment rate for those actively seeking work stands at a mere 4.7% — a 0.3 percentage point improvement from the prior year. It’s a rate that would make most industries jealous, particularly given the economic uncertainties that plagued 2024.
So what does this tell us about the much-hyped AI revolution in legal practice? It would appear that, as Mark Twain would have said, reports of the death of legal jobs have been greatly exaggerated — for now, at least.
While AI tools for tasks such as document review and legal research continue to evolve, they so far appear to be complementing rather than replacing human legal expertise, these employment numbers would suggest.
Perhaps clients still want to see a human face across the table (or on the Teams meeting) — preferably one with a bar card and the ability to understand nuance, context and the occasional legal joke.
That means that, for now at least, aspiring lawyers can breathe a sigh of relief: The robots aren’t yet taking away your jobs — they’re just helping you prepare for the interviews.
