Legal Recruiting · Michigan

The Michigan lateral market, in the numbers firms publish.

We track every opening Michigan law firms post publicly, and the salary ranges they publish with them. Here is what the market looks like right now, and what it means if you are weighing a move.

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Open demand

What Michigan firms are hiring for today

Openings posted publicly by law firms with Michigan offices (July 2026). Postings only show you the visible market; many searches, especially at partner level, never get posted at all.

265

Open law-firm postings

116

Attorney roles (associate)

119

Litigation openings

Detroit's diversified docket. Michigan posts one of the Midwest's larger dockets, with litigation carrying the volume and corporate and intellectual property splitting the rest evenly. The automotive supply chain keeps both deal work and patent work flowing through Detroit and Grand Rapids.

Source: Voll Recruiting analysis of publicly posted law-firm openings, July 2026.

Practice areas

Where the demand concentrates

Posted openings by practice area. If your practice sits in a deep column, you have options; if it sits in a thin one, timing and positioning matter more, and that is exactly the situation a recruiter earns their keep in.

Litigation

119 openings

Corporate / transactional

22 openings

Intellectual property

22 openings

Source: Voll Recruiting analysis of publicly posted law-firm openings, July 2026.

The part postings can't show you

The best Michigan moves are rarely the posted ones.

A posting tells you a seat exists. It does not tell you which groups are quietly building, which firms flex on class year, or where your book and background put you at the front of the line. That is the read we give every Michigan attorney we work with, confidentially, before anything is sent anywhere.

Get a confidential market read

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