According to the Occupational Outlook Handbook, employment for lawyers is expected to grow by about 5 percent, about as fast as the average for all careers, through 2033. Competition for jobs continues, as always to be keen due to the high numbers of law school graduates (a total of 34,934 students graduated from law school in 2023, according to Statista.com), the outsourcing of some legal services to lower cost legal providers that are located overseas, and staffing cuts at law firms.
Continued population growth, typical business activities, and increased numbers of legal cases involving health care, antitrust, environmental, intellectual property, artificial intelligence, international law, venture capital, energy, corporate and security litigation, real estate, compliance issues, elder law, and sexual harassment issues, among others, will create demand for lawyers.
According to Robert Half's Legal Salaries and Hiring Trends 2025 Salary Guide, the hottest legal practice areas are ethics and corporate governance; family law; labor and employment law; litigation; and privacy, data security, and information law. The following industries will offer the best employment prospects: financial services, government, health care, and manufacturing.
Law services will be more accessible to the middle-income public with the popularity of prepaid legal services and clinics. However, stiff competition has and will continue to urge some lawyers to look outside the legal profession for employment. Administrative and managerial positions in real estate companies, banks, insurance firms, and government agencies are typical areas where legal training is useful.
The top 10 percent of the graduating seniors of the country's best law schools will have more opportunities with well-known law firms and jobs on legal staffs of corporations, in government agencies, and in law schools in the next few decades. Lawyers in solo practice will find it hard to earn a living until their practice is fully established. The best opportunities exist in small towns or suburbs of large cities, where there is less competition and new lawyers can meet potential clients more easily.
Graduates with lower class rankings and from lesser-known schools may have difficulty in obtaining the most desirable positions.
In addition to emerging as a specialty practice area, advanced artificial intelligence is increasingly being used by lawyers to identify and summarize key components from a set of documents or text; recommend strategies for legal situations, career advancement, and business development; draft letters or other legal content based on a set of criteria for a case; and meet other goals. “There is no question as to whether AI will categorically transform legal work,” says the law technology firm Clio in its 2023 Legal Trends Report. “Instead, lawyers should be asking how AI will impact their practices and what they are doing to prepare. The answer to these questions will prove critical since it won’t be long before lawyers who use AI will see significant advantages over those who do not.”
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