BigLaw’s next recruiting war may not be over lawyers at all. Cooley is recruiting for 14 technology positions as it builds Cooley AI, its recently created AI subsidiary, according to Reuters.
The firm is looking for engineers and other technology specialists as it develops its own AI capabilities rather than simply buying whatever legal-tech vendors happen to be selling.
LawFuel noted the emerging BigLaw technology talent war back in 2024, when firms including Akin, McDermott, Latham, Cleary and Reed Smith were creating specialist AI roles. Two years later, the competition has moved from hiring AI executives to building entire engineering teams.
And Cooley is not alone, as Covington & Burling, Cravath, Kirkland & Ellis and Latham & Watkins are among major firms recruiting technology and AI talent as law firms find themselves competing with technology companies for people who can build the tech tools that are changing legal work and how it is performed.
But BigLaw firms are hunting down engineers, their appetite for freshly minted lawyers is showing signs of moving in the opposite direction.
Firms with more than 500 lawyers hired 6,588 new graduates last year, 538 fewer than in 2024, according to NALP data reported by Bloomberg Law. That’s a 7.5 percent fall, with shrinking summer classes pointing towards further pressure on first-year hiring.
For decades the traditional law firm moves were simple enough – recruiting graduates, billing their time, promoting some and replacing the rest. All very simple.
AI is almost certainly changing all of that. The employee who can build technology eliminating thousands of hours of repetitive legal work may become more valuable than another employee available to actually work those long hours.
BigLaw isn’t abandoning lawyers, but we need to watch where it is putting the new money.
Related: How AI Is Rewriting BigLaw
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