The following is an excerpt from Gene Commander’s March article in Attorney at Work. The article explores the impact of GenAI and shifting legal trends on smart growth talent development initiatives for law firms. The full article can be read here.
After more than a century of growth, the tally of active lawyers in the U.S. is now shrinking. From 1950 to 2019, the number of lawyers nationwide ballooned from just over 200,000 to 1.352 million, with rapid year-on-year increases from the 1970s. Since 2019, however, the count has dropped to 1.322 million active lawyers in 2024 – even as the U.S. population has continued to grow by more than a million people each year.
What accounts for this shift? Should this be concerning to law firms? And how can reimagined talent development and career advancement strategies help firms ride out the changing tides?