Trump Launches Attorney Recruiting Effort After Thousands Exited

The federal government wants to recruit attorneys after a year of cutting staff in nearly every agency.

A new Attorney Talent Network will give lawyers who are interested in federal jobs an online portal to post their resumes, interact with recruiters, and sign up for notifications about openings, the Office of Personnel Management announced Wednesday morning.

More than 9,000 attorneys left their federal government jobs in 2025, including more than 500 at the Justice Department, according to data from the OPM. The government filled more than 2,000 of those positions, for a net loss of 7,044 federal lawyers.

The bulk of the exiting attorneys took the government’s deferred resignation offer under Elon Musk’s leadership of the Department of Government Efficiency, an offer nicknamed the “fork in the road,” according to the OPM. Across all civilian positions, the federal workforce declined by more than 200,000 in 2025, with more than half of those resulting from deferred resignations.

The upcoming reclassification of federal employees in policy-related positions, under an OPM rule taking effect March 9, also could ease the path to terminating more attorneys if the administration sees them as resistant to its policy proposals.

Concerns have cropped up across a range of federal agencies about staffing shortages generally and the limited supply of lawyers. These include the National Labor Relations Board, the Justice Department’s civil rights division, and the Internal Revenue Service, to name a few.

At the IRS Office of Chief Counsel, 13% of staff members left last year in response to Musk’s buyout offer. The Food and Drug Administration has used its social media channels to advertise open positions for attorneys.