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 15 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*
12 Heenan Blaikie 12 7 0 58%
11 Bennett Jones 16 9 1 50%
2 Blake, Cassels & Graydon 29 22 2 81%
14 Borden Ladner Gervais 21 10 1 43%
3 Cassels Brock & Blackwell 19 11 5 79%
9 Davies Ward Phillips & Vineberg 22 11 5 65%
15 Dentons 15 7 0 47%
1 Department of Justice 11 11 0 100%
4 Fasken 19 13 1 72%
6 Goodmans 14 10 0 71%
17 Gowling WLG 19 5 1 28%
10 McCarthy Tétrault 28 18 0 64%
7 McMillan 15 10 0 67%
1 Osler, Hoskin & Harcourt 33 33 0 100%
8 Stikeman Elliott 33 21 1 66%
5 Torys 18 13 0 72%
13 Norton Rose Fulbright 13 7 0 54%
  TOTAL 337 218 17 68%

*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.