Law firms are cutting entry-level hiring and handing the grunt work to AI, which is good for partners at the top and bad for everyone trying to break into the profession.

• Firms like Clifford Chance are cutting roles, and PwC says AI means fewer hires ahead.
• The math is brutal: a first-year associate costs about $235,000 a year, an AI subscription costs $20 a month.
• The billable hour is breaking down, because clients now refuse to pay hundreds an hour for document review a computer does in seconds.
• Around 44% of legal tasks can already be automated, meaning roughly half a trillion dollars a year shifts from law firms to software companies.
• A new "legal engineer" job is being sold to graduates, but most of those roles are really software sales — and they will be automated too.

Outlook: Senior partners will keep getting richer in the short run, but with no juniors being trained, firms will have no one ready to replace them in a decade or two.