https://lawyering.substack.com/p/corporate-biglaw-attrition-rates
The graph is a bit crowded so best viewed on desktop.
The dataset consists of corporate associates who graduated law school in 2017. N=820 associates across 33 law firms.
The labels indicate which firm associates started at, but the metric is the % of associates who remain in biglaw generally (i.e. at any of the V100 law firms) at each year between 2017 and 2024.
Takeaways (for corporate only):
-The median associate left biglaw at year 6.
-Associates who started at V10 law firms generally stay longer in biglaw relative to the aggregated data. Most associates who started at V10 law firms are still in biglaw (i.e. no median terminal point currently).
-The earliest median biglaw tenure prior to exiting is 3-4 years at Cooley, Goodwin, and Fenwick, likely a result of a combination of layoffs (onset of covid, although this may have been limited to just Goodwin for 2021; and lower retention tail rates as a result of the more recent post-covid layoffs) and pipeline to tech companies (which have more in-house positions for relatively junior lawyers).