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I am an SA (Disputes) at a Tier 2/Tier 3 pan India law firm and normally a very optimistic person. However, given the state of things, I believe there is a duty on me (and anyone else associated with this field) to let the current law students/ upcoming freshers know of the harsh reality that is already hitting / will hit even more in the near future.
FRESHER HIRING IS ALREADY/ WILL GO DOWN TO NEAR ZERO IN THE COMING MONTHS
At law firms in general, the consensus is that we need to leverage AI to do the grunt work faster and in a smoother manner. This means that the job profile of freshers is just not there anymore.
Think of it cost wise. A claude pro account at an enterprise level costs about 5 to 10k a month and gives you a very decent amount of tokens which refresh every 5 hours. It can give you a first draft, go through documents, pull out research, even do formatting all in 10 mins. A fresher making about 70-80k a month in a tier 2/tier 3 firm will require training, constant oversight and 1 full day to produce a draft which will not even be half as decent as what Claude gave you. Think of it from the business perspective, why would the law firm hire a fresher for 80k instead of giving the existing team access to Claude?
This is not just speculation. At just my office, we hired 19 freshers from the 2024 batch, 16 from the 2025 batch and only 3 from the 2026 batch. The management has also made it clear that there is a fresher hiring freeze for the foreseeable future. It is not as if there are no hirings, there are a lot of open positions but no Partner wants to hire anyone below 2 to 3 years of solid experience because that work is now done by Claude at 1/10th the time and price with 5x the quality.
To all law students/freshers, this is the harsh reality.
Every month I see so many interns join, with quite a few of them asking for assessment internships and call backs. A lot of them are genuinely nice candidates who would have probably gotten a PPO if it was 2 or 3 years ago but right now no one wants a fresher at all. I am not trying to discourage anyone but just telling the truth. For those in the final years of college already, I guess there is no turning around unless you want to change streams so please try your luck especially with chambers for disputes. However, law students in early years or those in school thinking of taking law and pursuing a career in a law firm, guys please understand that the world has moved on very rapidly. By the time you finish law there may not be any jobs left for your experience range. So please think of it in advance and decide accordingly.
Regards,
A former fresher and a well-wisher.