Bay Street Hireback Ranking

Since 2009, Precedent has tracked the number of articling students Toronto law firms have hired back as first-year associates—and called it the Hireback Watch.

In the interactive chart below, we’ve ranked the firms that have historically taken on the largest crop of students. You can toggle between the past 16 years and sort by the hireback data in each column. And if you click on any firm names, you’ll see its numbers from over the years.

For a broader look at the articling job market, you can browse through our full list of Toronto-wide hireback numbers.

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Rank Firm Articling
Students		 Students
Hired Back		 Number of
opt outs		 Hireback Rate*
8 Goodmans 15 13 0 87%
1 Cassels Brock & Blackwell 23 23 0 100%
1 Department of Justice 10 10 0 100%
1 Osler, Hoskin & Harcourt 31 29 2 100%
1 Torys 17 17 0 100%
5 Blake, Cassels & Graydon 30 28 0 93%
6 Gowling WLG 14 11 2 92%
6 Stikeman Elliott 24 22 0 92%
9 Borden Ladner Gervais 30 24 2 86%
10 McMillan 12 10 0 83%
11 Davies Ward Phillips & Vineberg 18 14 1 82%
12 McCarthy Tétrault 29 21 3 81%
13 Bennett Jones 25 19 1 79%
13 Norton Rose Fulbright 15 11 1 79%
15 Dentons 11 8 0 73%
16 Fasken 21 13 1 65%
  TOTAL 325 273 13 88%

*Before calculating each hireback rate, we subtracted the opt-outs from each firm's total number of articling students.

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Notes on the data

  • Our data for each year before 2012 refers to Ogilvy Renault, which merged with Norton Rose in July 2011.
  • Our data for each year before 2013 refers to the numbers for FMC, which merged with Dentons in March 2013.
  • Our data for each year before 2015 refers to Davis LLP, which merged with DLA Piper in April 2015.
  • Our data for each year before 2016 refers to Gowling Lafleur Henderson, which merged with UK-based Wragge Lawrence Graham to form Gowling WLG in February 2016.
  • The Bay Street Ranking usually includes Goodmans LLP. In 2020, however, Goodmans did not respond to Precedent’s requests for its 2020 hireback data. As a result, the firm does not appear in that year’s final ranking.