Flat. Stagnant. Unchanged. How many ways can we say it? Our latest NLJ 350 survey shows that the number of attorneys at the nation’s largest law firms crept up by a meager 0.6 percent in 2014. That’s a marked contrast to last year’s 3.9 percent increase—which, on closer inspection, was the result of hundreds of foreign lawyers joining the ranks by way of U.S. and foreign firm mergers.
In 2014, just 900 lawyers were added to the tally, for a total of 147,518 lawyers working at NLJ 350 firms. No doubt, it could have been worse. Remember 2009? That year, lawyer totals plunged by 4 percent in response to the recession. Still, the results for 2014 reveal the weakest increase since then.
