Bay Street law firms' hireback data is good news and not so good: Precedent

A good example of how a small, specialty magazine can have significant impact in the industry it covers is the Precedent report on the the number of articling students big Toronto law firms have hired back as first-year associates.

For the 7th year the magazine for Ontario lawyers has compiled data that is probably unavailable anywhere else and then ranked the firms by their hireback rates. You can imagine that this is of great interest to law students and law firms alike.

This year, they found that the hireback rates on Bay Street held steady at 77%. In other words, almost 8 out of 10 students who articled got associate jobs. But Precedent also found that the number of articling positions has fallen over six years by about 14%.

"Indeed, this confirms what most students probably feel intuitively: the recruitment battleground on Bay Street is more competitive than ever." 

[Disclosure: I am on the advisory board of Precedent, but have nothing to do with the editorial.]