Big Law firms across Bay Street are recruiting mid-career lawyers to build the firm’s internal AI tools, as AI jobs take on the glamour once reserved for the deal makers and courtroom litigators who topped the legal hierarchy for over a century.

Osler, for example, is hiring an AI workflow lawyer, whose job includes designing and building AI agents and other technology products. Another posting calls for a practice support lawyer that advises other lawyers on AI adoption, while McCarthy Tétrault was recruiting a lawyer to create “precedents, workflows and playbooks” with technology.

Not any IT professional will do. Many postings require or prefer candidates with law degrees that are called to the bar. Gowling WLG is recruiting lawyers with specialized case experience in fields like real estate and lending to roll out automation tools.

It’s part of a larger trend of companies hiring AI managers with the authority to oversee agentic AI programs, according to Sam Jenkins, managing partner at Edmonton-based tech focused consultancy Punchcard Systems. In highly regulated sectors like banking, insurance and law, firms face pressure to cut costs using AI, but cannot compromise on quality, said Jenkins. Enter AI managers, who oversee agents that can take on more tasks autonomously and trigger repeatable sets of tasks called workflows.

It’s uncommon for law firms to open pathways toward management outside the associate-to-partner track that has been popular since the early 1900s. Al Hounsell, senior director of AI, innovation and knowledge at Gowling WLG, said that type of career path didn’t exist when he joined the industry. Hounsell, who previously worked as a tech executive, pitched his position to his law firm and carved it out as an alternative to working on traditional case law. 

“We’ve certainly seen a big shift where there are now established career paths for this type of thing… that help the broader function of the firm from a business perspective,” said Hounsell.

The new jobs are still a small part of the legal labour market. Less than one per cent of law firm associates left their roles for an artificial intelligence or tech position in 2025, according to the National Association for Law Placement Foundation’s survey of U.S. and Canadian law firms. 

That may change as legaltech companies plow billions into their businesses and begin hiring more lawyers to build their AI systems. Three legaltech companies alone, Legora, Clio and Harvey, raised combined venture funding of at least US$1.6 billion over the past year. And general-purpose AI companies like Anthropic are building out legal workflow teams, too. 

Hounsell said these jobs could fill a void for lawyers who have spent seven or more years working toward partnership but aren’t drawn to its business development side, which often requires self-promotion and networking to become a firm rainmaker. 

“Traditionally, a good amount of people around that year of call would leave law firms and go to in-house roles as they’re looking for something a little bit different,” he said. “It’s great that law firms are providing opportunities.” 

Since the COVID-19 pandemic, more lawyers have been making lateral career moves, rather than staying and hoping to move up the ladder. Legaltech company SurePoint suggested that AI could accelerate that trend as firms prioritize mid-career lawyers over new grads. Demand for lateral hires with AI expertise grew 106 per cent year-over-year in 2025, the company’s analysis of hiring data found, “reflecting firms’ willingness to pay for specialized AI experience even as many predict AI will reduce demand for some entry-level work.” 

Fasken, one of Canada’s biggest law firms, is taking two different approaches. It’s hiring AI enablement lawyers, while also offering its experienced lawyers secondments that let them devote 50 per cent of their time for building technology to improve the firm’s efficiency, said Eowynne Noble, Fasken’s chief people officer in Toronto. It recently announced a partnership with legaltech company Legora to build more AI agents.   

Law firms have long had specialist roles, “counsel” roles for lawyers with unique expertise that are neither partners or associates, said Noble. Knowledge management lawyers that once managed firms’ information archives are now the firms’ experts in cloud systems and generating data analytics. Now, even  more career paths are open to legal technology experts, from consulting to working with vendors, said Andrea Alliston, a partner in the firm’s innovation practice. Fasken is hoping that these secondments can serve as another type of “career enhancer” for lawyers, Noble said.

“Sometimes you do find the rare combination of the skill set of an excellent practitioner and someone who really understands that technology. We are lucky to have some of those lawyers within our firm,” said Noble, adding that the firm wants to show it’s “giving them the support to develop.”