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.

Scroll
Rank Firm Articling
Students		 Students
Hired Back		 Number of
opt outs		 Hireback Rate*
1 Goodmans 13 11 2 100%
16 Bennett Jones 22 19 0 86%
13 Blake, Cassels & Graydon 26 23 1 92%
1 Borden Ladner Gervais 23 21 2 100%
1 Cassels Brock & Blackwell 15 15 0 100%
1 Davies Ward Phillips & Vineberg 13 12 1 100%
1 Dentons 10 10 0 100%
1 Department of Justice 20 19 1 100%
1 Fasken 16 16 0 100%
12 Gowling WLG 15 14 0 93%
1 McCarthy Tétrault 28 26 2 100%
14 McMillan 11 8 2 89%
1 Osler, Hoskin & Harcourt 26 22 4 100%
15 Stikeman Elliott 25 22 0 88%
1 Torys 19 18 1 100%
1 Norton Rose Fulbright 15 13 2 100%
  TOTAL 297 269 18 96%

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

submit_icon

Submit your Numbers

Send us your firm’s hireback numbers.

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.