It’s been nearly three years since ChatGPT successfully passed the bar exam, a feat that sent a wave of existential dread through the legal profession. Yet the demise of this career hasn’t materialized just yet, and Gen Z appears to be flocking to law school as a hideout from the stormy entry-level hiring market.
Yet law school admissions experts are warning that what goes up must come down. “We’ve been on a good run, so the pendulum swings back,” Mike Spivey, CEO of Spivey Consulting Group, a law school admissions consultancy, told Fortune. “When you get an oversaturation of law school students, law firms can be pickier. They tend to then slow down the hiring or slow down the salary increases.”
Though because the question is not “if” but “when” law firms will pump the brakes on hiring, college grads enrolling in law school today could find themselves in a tough situation because of the sheer volume of students entering the profession, not to mention the “low-hire, low-fire” economy that sees Gen Z unemployment rates at roughly double the national average. The confluence of a potential hiring slowdown and record-breaking enrollment numbers could set these students on a dangerous course, according to Spivey.
“You have more people going to law school and the possibility of law firms not hiring as much,” Spivey said. “That’s a dangerous one-two punch.”
The looming threat of AI automation could compound the risk of job loss, especially following a recession. Jen Leonard, founder of Creative Lawyers—an organization assisting leaders in the legal profession—said that an economic downturn could wipe out junior associate roles. Yet unlike in past recessions, those entry-level jobs wouldn’t rebound as firms would seek AI adoption to maintain a competitive edge. “The firms and the clients will figure out how to use AI to some degree [to] replace that labor,” Leonard told Fortune. “When the economy rebounds, I don’t know that you would see a rebound in entry-level hiring the way you normally would.”
While Spivey said that student concerns with the rule of law under the Trump administration account for some of the uptick in law school applicants, he noted the overwhelming majority of that trend can be attributed to hiring woes. “While we’re not in an economic recession, we’re in a hiring recession,” Spivey said. “And that’s 90% of it.”
Yet Spivey said that AI adoption hasn’t yet had an impact on hiring processes, mainly owing to the overly cautious nature of law firms. “They are trained to be risk averse, so they put their little pinky toe in the pool,” Spivey said. “Every time there’s a horrible media story about AI failing in the legal profession, they take it out of the pool.” But he said that is set to change over time.
“Every time they put [their toe] back in, they put it in deeper.”
