The number of lawyers in the U.S. is growing. For the first time since 2020, the population of U.S. lawyers increased, jumping to 1,374,720 in 2025, up from 1,355,963 in 2024, according to the American Bar Association’s 2025 Profile of the Legal Profession.
After steadily growing to 1,363,017 in 2020, the lawyer population remained stagnant before dropping in 2024.
This 1.38% increase in 2025 is fueled by huge law school graduating classes and high rates of employment. The National Association of Law Placement (NALP) reported that the graduating class of 2024 was 12% larger than any class since 2012 and had the highest employment rate in nearly four decades.
Each year, the ABA’s Profile of the Legal Profession features data on professional trends and lawyer composition, based on the ABA Center for Bar Leadership’s National Lawyer Population Survey, as well as other government and nonprofit organizations.
Illinois ranks among top 10
Illinois ranked sixth in the states with the highest number of resident active lawyers in 2025, reporting 61,945 active lawyers. This is a slight decrease from 62,093 in 2024.
New York topped the list with 190,015 resident active lawyers, followed by California with 181,048, and Texas with 99,867.
States define “resident” based on residence of business address, the report says.
Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Delaware experienced the biggest growth in percentage of resident active attorneys over the last year. Longer term, over the past 10 years, the number of resident active attorneys in Arkansas, the District of Columbia, Idaho, North Carolina, Texas, and the Virgin Islands has grown more than 15%.
Creeping toward gender parity
The percentage of female attorneys continues to grow gradually, reaching 41.31% in 2025, up from 40.51% in 2024 and 34.72% in 2015.
The percentage of male attorneys, on the other hand, has been steadily decreasing. In 2025, 58.36% of attorneys were male, down from 59.18% in 2024 and 65.28% in 2015.
The ABA’s 2024 Profile of the Legal Profession predicted the potential for gender parity in 2026, pointing to data that show women outnumber men in law school and comprise the majority of law firm associates.
Slight increases for some racial minority groups
When it comes to race and ethnicity, active Caucasian attorneys make up 78.54% of the profession in 2025, down from 86.15% in 2015.
The percentage of African American, Asian, Hispanic, and multiracial active attorneys has increased very slightly from 2015 to 2025, with African American attorneys making up 4.91% of lawyers (up from 4.72% in 2015); Asian attorneys making up 6.37% (up from 2.48% in 2015); Hispanic attorneys making up 5.89% (up from 5.25% in 2015); and multiracial attorneys making up 3.76% (up from 1.19% in 2016, the first year data was collected). The percentage of active Hawaiian/Pacific Islander attorneys decreased to 0.14% in 2025 from 0.62% in 2015.
NALP recently reported that white law school graduates from the Class of 2024 saw higher-than-average employment rates, while Latinx, Asian, Black or African American, and Native Hawaiian and other Pacific Islander graduates experienced slightly below average employment rates. The disparities widened for attorney positions requiring or anticipating bar admission.
Note: The ABA’s National Lawyer Population Survey notes that not all states collect and report demographic data, and that the number of states that do has stagnated. As such, the results should be considered a “convenience sample.”
In addition, the data on LGBTQ and attorneys who report a disability was insufficient to report.
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