Is Australia producing too many law graduates?

Identical twins Sarah and Susan Sali share more than the same genes. The duo graduated last year from the University of Wollongong with double degrees in law and commerce. They completed practical legal training (PLT) through the College of Law and were admitted to the profession at the same time while working at the same local law firm. In search of broader opportunities in their areas of interest – renewable energy for Susan and employment law for Sarah – they upped sticks and moved to Sydney, both landing graduate roles within months of each other.

It’s no coincidence that the sisters have followed parallel paths in law, explains Sarah, who’s now a solicitor at boutique firm Southern Waters Legal. “We knew from when we were in high school that we wanted to go into law. We’re both planners – we like to be intentional with what we’re doing.”

But despite their planning, finding work in Sydney wasn’t easy. Susan applied for around 15 in-house jobs before securing a commercial graduate role with infrastructure and renewable energy multinational Acciona. “I was inclined to corporate because private practice is too adversarial – I like to think there should be a win-win for everyone,” she says, describing the job-searching process as “very competitive”.

Sarah believes applying for junior lawyer roles added another layer of complexity – and stress. “Susan and I are the first in our family to go to university, so we weren’t aware of common windows of opportunities for applying for jobs until we got towards the end of our degree and saw that many of our friends had locked in graduate positions and clerkships,” she says. “Plus, I wanted to be quite specific with what I was looking for. It was difficult.”

It may seem as though Sarah and Susan’s experiences feed a common fear across the profession: that there is an oversupply of law graduates in Australia. Yet their story shows that securing early-career roles is less about competing for a limited number of positions and more about the value of preparation and aligning oneself with suitable opportunities.

More than becoming a lawyer

Concerns about an oversupply of law graduates gained traction around a decade ago amid a flurry of media coverage – “too many kids do law”, opined then prime minister Malcolm Turnbull – but the seeds had been planted many years earlier.

Dramatic reforms to the university system in the late 1980s led to a rapid expansion in the number of universities, which in turn fuelled growth in law degree enrolments. Fast forward 30 years and the size of the profession continues to rise, with 97,500 practicing solicitors now working across the country, according to the Urbis 2024 National Profile of Solicitors – an increase of 69 per cent since 2011. In excess of 15,000 law graduates emerge each year from Australia’s 40 law schools, which number nearly twice as many as Canada’s, despite comparable population sizes.

Professor Fleur Johns, dean and head of school at The University of Sydney Law School, points to macro factors, including economic growth, legislative changes, increasing regulatory complexity, and higher compliance demands, as key drivers of demand for legal services.

She cautions against viewing law “in a highly short-term vocational sense … because of the highly adaptable nature of the skillset and the capabilities that people build up through a legal education and all the opportunities that that presents”.

“It’s important for universities and the profession to work closely together, to remain in active dialogue, but not to pursue a pre-specified fit between the number of graduates and the number of practising lawyers,” Johns says.

Indeed, studying law is often about more than becoming a lawyer; it is an education in critical thinking, ethical reasoning and policy-based analysis. Johns says surveys conducted over the past decade suggest that 30–40 per cent of law students – who are required to study law as part of a double degree – have no intention to practise law.

A 2025 discussion paper on PLT reform by the Legal Profession Admission Board of New South Wales notes that between 2011–2022, many more students graduated with law degrees then those who sought admission to the legal profession. For example, 16,000 law graduates completed university between 2016–2018, while approximately 5,500 lawyers joined the profession during this time.

At UNSW, law students also do a double degree and go on to a wide range of careers that may or may not involve practising as a lawyer. “We have in excess of 20, if not 30, double-degree options for our students,” explains Brooke Johnson, manager of careers and student engagement in the faculty of Law and Justice.

“For some students, law is the career pathway that they would like to pursue upon graduation. But for others, they will decide to pursue the other side of their degree, whether that’s psychology, data science, commerce or one of those multitude of other pathways. Many students self-select not to pursue a law career, but the skills that they learn through that law degree are transferable to other industries.”

The 2024 Graduate Outcomes Survey, published in September, reports that 79 per cent of 2024 law and paralegal studies graduates were in full-time employment, compared to 85 per cent of those who graduated in 2023. The authors note the slight decline is “consistent with general employment trends”.

Among law graduates who undertook a Graduate Diploma in Legal Practice with the intention to practise law, the survey found 93 per cent of students from the College of Law and 75 per cent from the LeoCussen Centre for Law were in full-time employment.

Prof Johns notes the key areas of opportunity for graduates: “Many of the larger law firms are telling me that they’re on a growth trajectory and we’re not seeing a short-term contraction in their hiring of graduates. There’s also an expansion of growth in in-house legal work in a wide range of settings.”

But she says there remains a “high level of anxiety” among graduates concerned about their employment prospects after graduation, in large part due to trends occurring in other jurisdictions. “In the US, for instance, we’re seeing real contraction in graduate recruitment within the legal profession.”

Too many graduates in some sectors

Law is a profession of many parts, and some sectors are more attractive to graduates than others. This can make some areas fiercely competitive and distort how the overall graduate job market is perceived.

At commercial firm Piper Alderman, the number of graduate positions is steadily increasing, explains Dani Guest, director of people and development. “Part of our talent strategy is to grow our own. We view the graduate program as a really good training ground, so bringing in more people at that level to hopefully build out the junior talent pipeline has meant that part of our strategy has been to increase the number of graduates that we bring in.”

The trouble is that the volume of applications for graduate positions far exceed the number of positions. “There can be 500 applications for four or five positions,” Guest says. “I’ve been with the firm about three-and-a-half years and year-on-year we’re seeing increases in the number of applications that we’re getting for these programs. It is super competitive.”

Guest says that even taking into account that the ease of writing, and therefore submitting, job applications has increased with the advent of AI, “potentially we do have too many graduates.”

Johnson says many graduates hope to pursue a career in corporate and commercial law, beginning with a highly competitive clerkship. “Only a very small percentage of students who apply through a formal clerkship program will commence their career through a clerkship program. We really encourage students to explore as many different areas as possible before making the decision to focus on these areas of law.”

For students set on corporate and commercial law, she says it can be important to explore other entry points. “That could be working in a casual paralegal role and undertaking PLT on your own, and then once you’re qualified as a lawyer applying for entry-level lawyer roles, rather than formal graduate programs,” Johnson explains.

Practice areas short on graduates

Other sectors of law are less competitive. Georgia Hill graduated from Macquarie University with Bachelor of Law and Bachelor of Arts in 2023 with the goal of working criminal law. She was fortunate to secure an associateship at the District Court of NSW. “I worked with Judge Wilson for about 15 months while I undertook my PLT,” Hill says.

After applying for just two jobs, she then secured a position as a junior lawyer with the Aboriginal Legal Service, where she’d worked as a paralegal during university. “I knew that I wanted to pursue a career in criminal law. It’s quite niche for law graduates, but I think that did help me because I knew what jobs to apply for.”

Hill says she had a much easier time looking for a graduate position than many of her university friends. “Everybody’s going for clerkships and going down corporate and commercial avenues because there’s this idea that it’s a little bit more glamorous and you earn a little bit more money. Criminal law is probably a little bit grungy – you’re in court dealing with clients and perhaps not getting as much monetary compensation for the work that you do,” she says.

Among graduate lawyers, Hill believes “there’s probably a mismatch” in the opportunities people are seeking out. “At the Aboriginal Legal Service, we need young criminal solicitors. Community legal centres, I would imagine, have many problems with understaffing and under resourcing.”

One area where graduates are in particularly short supply is not a branch of law but a geographic location: rural and regional. Vanessa Gibson, managing partner at Gordon Garling Moffitt, which has two offices in Grenfell and Young in central west NSW and employs five lawyers, says it is virtually impossible to attract Sydney-based graduates to roles in the country.

“I’ve been at the firm over 20 years and in that period it has significantly changed. Working in a firm like Gordon Garling Moffitt used to be quite a prestigious thing to do, whereas now it’s the lifestyle that Sydney offers that the graduates are chasing,” she says.

“There is not an area of law, other than personal injury and medical negligence, that we do not do in this firm. And you might do 15 different types of law in any given day. You can still buy a house out here for $400,000 and you can have an acre of land with it. But it doesn’t matter how much we articulate these benefits to people who’ve only been in Sydney – unless they’re in their 40s or older, it’s just not exciting enough.”

Gibson cites the case of a recent law graduate who turned down a role with the firm because they didn’t want to leave Sydney. “We were prepared to pay to relocate them, assist with accommodation and pay for the PLT program – there wasn’t much more that we could offer.

“They said it wasn’t about money; they just didn’t want to leave Sydney, even though we made it very clear in the process that you need not apply unless you’re prepared to relocate to Grenfell or Young,” she says, noting with irony that this graduate has been unable to find a job in Sydney.

Updating university careers advice

Universities are doing more to support law students so they’re ready to hit the ground running and stand out in the job market, especially in competitive sectors like corporate and commercial. Helping students secure work experience and access networking and extracurricular opportunities equips them to align their skills with opportunities.

“There are essentially three buckets that employers are looking for: work experience, extracurriculars and academics,” Johnson says. “Law schools are becoming more conscious of having to ensure that their students are prepared for alternatives and making sure they have a plan B.”

Johns and Johnson highlight that both law schools have also introduced specialised careers advice services for students. “We have a team of career advisors who provide one-on-one 45-minute coaching sessions. Students can engage with that service as many times as they would like,” Johnson explains.

For Sarah and Susan Sali, proactively planning and steering their careers continues to be a top priority. Both maintain regularly updated five-year plans and intend to pursue Master’s degrees. “You need to have goals, otherwise the time goes by,” Susan says.

So crucial is planning to their success as graduate lawyers that they’ve even set up a LinkedIn page and built a five-year plan for their younger sister, who’s a third-year law student. “We said to her: start right now,” Sarah laughs.