NALP Foundation 2026: Associates Still Leaving Within Five Years — Attrition Reaches All-Time High Territory

The NALP Foundation's April 2026 report confirmed that law firm associates continue to leave firms within the first five years at rates consistent with or above the all-time high documented in August 2025 — and multiple trade press accounts this week noted the finding that "BigLaw designed it that way," pointing to systemic structural factors rather than inadequate retention programming. Attrition is markedly higher for associates of color (documented in NALP Foundation's April 2025 data), and the pattern of departure within the first five years — the period when associates are making the most intensive investment in developing practice expertise — represents a compounding institutional knowledge loss that the profession has yet to account for accurately at the firm level. The BigHand 2026 report reinforces the financial dimension: 24% of firms confirm that support staff turnover is directly impacting billable hours and revenue, and 51% expect to lose between 21% and 50% of support staff to retirement within five years — a workforce double-pressure that manages partners are addressing with AI adoption (96% of firms) without the workflow redesign that would actually relieve attorney workload. For wellbeing officers and HR directors, the NALP pattern is a diagnostic: firms whose wellbeing investment is not materially affecting five-year retention rates are investing in the wrong layer of the problem.