Powered by
MOMENTUM
MEDIA
Career progression sits at the forefront of many lawyers’ professional ambitions, yet a concerning gap between aspiration and reality has emerged. Here, Lawyers Weekly reveals how fewer than four in 10 lawyers believe they can achieve their career ambitions where they are today.
What is the Legal Firm of Choice Survey?
Now in its 11th edition, the Top 25 Attraction Firms ranking is a defining feature of the Legal Firm of Choice Survey, which identifies the most sought-after private legal practices across Australia.
The latest survey was conducted from 1 April to 31 May and garnered a total of 612 responses from legal professionals currently engaged in private practice throughout the country. It recorded the attitudes, priorities, and perceptions of these practitioners, offering a valuable glimpse into the evolving landscape of the legal profession.
Last month, Lawyers Weekly also published The Top 25 Attraction Firms ranking for 2025-26, revealed which BigLaw firms are climbing in popularity and which are slipping among lawyers this year, and uncovered that more than 20 per cent of lawyers intend to leave their jobs this year.
The methodology
The survey asked participants to evaluate their firms across a range of workplace attributes, including whether they felt supported in advancing their careers and progressing through the ranks within their organisation.
The findings exposed a broader concern around career progression within the legal profession, with only 75 per cent of respondents believing they can continue to grow their careers within their current firms.
While women have historically faced greater barriers to advancement, the results suggest uncertainty around career progression is now being felt more widely, affecting lawyers across gender lines.
Among male lawyers, 82 per cent said they felt their firms provided opportunities to progress their careers, with 46 per cent rating their firms’ support as good and a further 36 per cent describing it as excellent.
While some viewed their firms’ support positively, 18 per cent said their organisations were failing to provide adequate pathways for progression, including 5 per cent who rated opportunities as poor and 1 per cent who described them as terrible.
However, female lawyers continue to feel the impact more acutely, with only seven in 10 (70 per cent) believing they can progress their careers within their current firms.
While 37 per cent rated their firm’s support for career progression as good and 33 per cent as excellent, a significant 30 per cent felt advancement opportunities were not achievable where they currently work.
Among those who held negative views, 7 per cent described their firm’s support for career progression as poor, while a further 2 per cent went further, rating it as terrible.
What needs to be done to change this?
The consequences extend beyond individual careers, presenting a growing challenge for law firms as well.
Left unaddressed, stalled career progression can erode morale, weaken engagement, and ultimately push high-performing lawyers to seek opportunities elsewhere.
Alison Crowther, partner at Empire Group, stressed that one of the key reasons lawyers feel their careers have stalled is not necessarily a shortage of opportunities, but a breakdown in communication between lawyers and their employers about progression, development, and future pathways.
“One of the biggest reasons lawyers feel stuck in their careers is not necessarily a lack of opportunity, but a lack of communication,” Crowther said.
“Lawyers assume their career aspirations are understood, while firms assume their lawyers are satisfied with their current role. This disconnect can lead to frustration, disengagement, and ultimately resignation.”
Rather than placing the responsibility solely on one side, Crowther said bridging the career communication gap requires a joint effort, with lawyers expected to speak up about their ambitions and firms challenged to match that initiative with clear career pathways, regular feedback, and greater transparency around future opportunities.
“Lawyers should take the initiative to discuss their career goals, development expectations, and progression aspirations with their leaders,” Crowther said.
“Equally, firms should provide regular feedback, clear career pathways, and transparent discussions about future opportunities. When expectations are clearly communicated, both parties are better positioned to work towards beneficial outcomes.”
While the solution may sound straightforward, Crowther argued that regular, meaningful career conversations can make the difference between retaining ambitious lawyers and losing talented professionals who feel their aspirations have been ignored.
“Sounds simple, but regular and meaningful conversation can prevent the loss of talented lawyers and help build more engaged, motivated, and long-term team members,” Crowther said.
Yet communication is only one piece of the puzzle.
Daniel Stirling, director of G2 Legal, warned that broader forces reshaping the legal profession are making traditional career pathways increasingly difficult to navigate.
“There is some uncertainty around progression within law firms at present due to several factors, including market uncertainty, lack of lawyers at certain levels, and the rapid changes caused by AI,” Stirling said.
From economic volatility and the rapid evolution of legal work to the growing movement of experienced practitioners into in-house roles or overseas markets, Stirling said a combination of industry shifts is making it harder for the next generation of lawyers to plan their career trajectories.
“Market uncertainty, given world events, and the evolution of legal work and the wider economy caused by AI go hand in hand in making it more difficult to plan ahead and make progression more difficult for juniors,” Stirling said.
“The fact that many of the best lawyers have taken other paths, such as moving overseas or in-house, [has] also robbed law firms of potential leadership talent, and this can slow down the promotion pathway further down the chain.”
Beyond these structural challenges, Stirling said firms are also grappling with a growing generational divide, as traditional expectations around career progression increasingly clash with the priorities of younger lawyers seeking greater flexibility and balance.
“There can also be a disconnect between more experienced lawyers and partners’ expectations and junior lawyers’ plans for their own careers and working environments,” Stirling said.
According to Stirling, the once-linear journey to partnership has become significantly longer and more complex, leaving firms grappling with how to balance established promotion models with the changing expectations of a new generation of lawyers.
“The linear path that current partners may have experienced in their progression is now more challenging and takes much longer to complete. This can be off-putting for some juniors who desire more flexibility and balance in their lives,” Stirling said.
The changing nature of career progression is also being fuelled by shifts in how law firms reward performance.
Phillip Hunter, head of in-house legal and governance, and Steven Corfield, principal of private practice, at CKG Search, said the move away from predictable lockstep remuneration models towards performance-based structures has made the path to partnership increasingly difficult to navigate.
“The evolution of law firm remuneration models, away from lockstep and towards performance-based and hybrid structures, has been the primary driver of the difficulty lawyers face in progressing to partner,” they said.
Hunter and Corfield said the result has been a growing career bottleneck for senior lawyers, many of whom struggle to build the client following required for partnership because existing partners are often reluctant to hand over work that could reduce their own remuneration.
“Senior lawyers often lack the bandwidth or opportunity to build a practice that satisfies their firm’s progression criteria, and partners will rarely carve up their own practice to smooth the path of a supporting lawyer, for fear of diluting their own remuneration,” they said.
The pair added that, as a result, many aspiring partners are left waiting for succession opportunities, senior departures, or a boom in their practice area, while firms increasingly favour lateral hires over developing talent from within.
“Aspiring partners are left dependent on succession planning, senior departures, or a spike in their practice area, and many firms now favour lateral recruitment over organic growth,” they said.
To break that cycle, Hunter and Corfield argued that addressing these barriers starts with creating clearer, more transparent pathways to partnership, underpinned by honest conversations from the outset about what it genuinely takes to reach the top.
“Clearer pathways start with transparent criteria and early, honest conversations about what partnership will actually take,” they said.
