David Nicol says the political uncertainty may prompt some lawyers to rethink the move
The wave of Canadian lawyers moving to the US has slowed – but not for the reasons many might assume. While some headlines point to visa headaches and cross-border politics, the real driver behind the drop-off is far more straightforward: a cooling legal market.
That’s according to David Nicol, a Los Angeles-based co-head at legal recruitment firm Marsden, which specializes in placing Canadian and Australian lawyers in US and UK markets.
“We are still moving lawyers from Canada to [the] US, but the numbers and the volumes are significantly down from where they were at the hiring peak, which was in 2021 and early 2022 – when record numbers of lawyers moved to the US market. It was really unprecedented at that point,” he says.
Nicol, who focuses on placing partners, counsel, and senior associates in major US cities, says demand has cooled since the boom.
Nicol says that cross-border hiring took a hit primarily due to cooling demand.
“US firms hire from international markets, usually Canada and Australia when demand outstrips supply in the local market,” he says.
During the 2021 hiring surge, US firms looked beyond their borders to keep up with record deal volume. But that changed rapidly by late 2022, he adds.
He says there was an abrupt drop-off in transactional activity in 2022, which is now slowly returning.
“But there was a period in late 2022 when … many large [US] firms that hire lawyers from Canada were letting go [of] local associates rather than hiring, and the teams were contracting rather than growing.”
While US placements have continued, they’ve been mainly concentrated in a handful of practice areas, Nicol adds.
“We are definitely placing Canadians… into the market, but they would tend to be focused mostly on leveraged finance and then energy and infrastructure,” Nicol says.
“M&A has started to come back … last year, but we definitely haven't seen the same volumes of Canadians being hired,” he adds.
Despite the media chatter about the mistreatment of Canadians at the border, Nicol says visa issues are not a significant obstacle for Canadian lawyers.
“I think that is overblown. The reality is… when US firms look at international associates, usually Canadians are number one because the TN visa is readily available,” he says. “I don't think that's changed recently.”
Instead, the hesitation often stems from the cost and timeline of onboarding a foreign-trained associate.
He says that it's more costly and time-consuming for firms to hire from Canada because there is a period during which they must give lawyers time off to prepare for a local bar exam if they haven’t already passed it beforehand.
Meanwhile, while market conditions are the main driver behind reduced cross-border hiring, Nicol acknowledges that some Canadian lawyers themselves are becoming more cautious about moving to the US.
“I think there are a couple of underlying social trends as well that… we'll have to see how [they] play out, given the whole political situation just now. The political tensions between Canada and the US may impact some attorneys’ desire to move internationally,” he says.
For now, that sentiment hasn’t seeped into the market.
“We're at a point [where] the main driver behind the drop-off has been market supply and demand,” he says.
Nicol says there is an emerging trend among Canadian and Australian lawyers to show more interest in moving to London than the US.
The compensation can often match that of US law firms, and he says there is no state requirement to pass a bar exam.
Nicol adds that the trend is “soft” for now, and the US market remains a top target for Canadian lawyers looking to move abroad.
Another trend he’s observed in recent years is that Canadian lawyers are staying longer in the US than they used to.
“Historically, I think lots of lawyers would probably have returned to Canada at an earlier stage in their career, after two or three years.”
He says that the reason for a longer stay might be an increase in the salary gap between US and Canada-based law firms. Another reason, he adds, is the rise in the cost of living in Canada.
“Real estate prices in several markets like Toronto have increased considerably. So… the actual trend that I've noticed over the last five years is Canadian attorneys staying in the US [for] much longer periods of time than they previously would have, going back 10 years.”
For now, hiring in the US remains slow but steady, especially in key transactional areas. Nicol says that the door to the US isn’t closed – it’s just more narrowly open.
“It hasn't dropped off entirely. Energy and infrastructure, leveraged finance, and M&A lawyers – we are still placing them in US firms, just in lesser volumes.”
Ultimately, the determining factor will be the pace of the market’s rebound.
“When the transactional markets do come back, that demand will come back in terms of for Canadians,” he says.
