AI is Eating the Entry-level Lunch
For years, partners have whispered about how many juniors they actually need if a machine can read 10,000 documents in an hour. This week, MinterEllison in Australia stopped whispering and started acting.
The firm has effectively put the Australian legal market on notice, slashing its 2025-26 graduate intake by nearly a third. We aren’t talking about a minor dip or a “market correction” but rather about a drop from over 100 spots to just 72.
And unlike their rivals, who are still hiding behind excuses like “seasonal variations” or “post-COVID over-hiring,” Minters is being brutally honest – AI is eating the entry-level lunch.
The Death of the Traditional ‘Starter Task’
For decades, the path to becoming a senior partner was paved with the monotonous, soul-crushing labor of document review, basic research, and discovery. It was a rite of passage and a lucrative billing model.
But Rachel Banks, (left) MinterEllison’s Chief People Officer, has made it clear that the “routine work” graduates traditionally cut their teeth on is now being handled by the bots.
When the grunt work disappears, the need for “grunts” disappears with it.
Minters isn’t alone in shrinking their classes. Herbert Smith Freehills, Allens, Mallesons, and Norton Rose Fulbright have all seen their graduate numbers slide.
Total hiring across eight top-tier firms fell by about 7 per cent this year. But while the others point to the economy or shifting practice needs, Minters is the first to admit that the structural foundation of the law firm—the pyramid model—is being hollowed out from the bottom up.
Adapt or Evaporate
The message for law students is chilling but clear: being “smart” isn’t enough anymore. The firms that are still hiring like Gilbert + Tobin and Corrs, who actually increased their numbers are looking for a different breed of human.
The new graduate isn’t just a legal researcher; they need to be an “AI pilot.” Firms are now looking for juniors who can blend human judgment with the ability to harness tools like Harvey or Legora. If you can’t add value beyond what a prompt can generate, you are essentially overhead that firms are no longer willing to carry.
The Courtroom Speedbump
It’s not a total takeover yet. The one thing keeping the graduate job market from a total freefall is the bench. Judges are increasingly wary of “AI hallucinations” and are holding human lawyers strictly accountable for every word filed. For now, firms still need humans to vet the machine’s homework.
But as MinterEllison’s pivot shows, the “human in the loop” doesn’t necessarily have to be a first-year associate. If one senior lawyer with a sophisticated AI tool can do the work of five juniors, the math for law grads looks increasingly grim.
The “Big Law silence” has been broken. The question now is which firm will be the next to admit their graduate program is getting a permanent haircut.
