Trump hiring freeze hits law students headed to the U.S. Justice Department

By Karen Sloan

Jan 23 (Reuters) - The U.S. Department of Justice has rescinded job offers to law students who were set to join the agency this year, a move some legal educators called a "heartbreaking" and "cruel" outcome for soon-to-be attorneys who want to work for the government.

The cuts made this week hit third-year law students who had been accepted into the Justice Department’s prestigious and highly competitive Attorney General's Honors Program, which places new law graduates into entry-level jobs throughout the agency’s various divisions, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Drug Enforcement Administration.

“They’ve had the rug pulled out from under them and it’s so heartbreaking,” said Lois Casaleggi, associate dean of career services at the University of Chicago Law School. “They are trying to serve our country.”

President Donald Trump announced a temporary hiring freeze on federal jobs in a speech following his inauguration and followed up with an executive order that same day calling for government officials to develop and send to agency heads a federal hiring plan that will "restore merit to government service” within 120 days.

The Justice Department did not respond on Thursday to requests for comment on the number of offers revoked. A webpage for the program lists more than 100 available Honors Program positions. The Honors Program was founded in 1953 and is its primary conduit for entry-level hiring at the DOJ.

Data from the National Association for Law Placement shows that 252 law graduates were employed in a federal government honors program in 2023. The U.S. Department of the Treasury, the Department of Labor and the Department of Homeland Security are among other federal agencies that maintain smaller honors programs for entry level lawyer hiring.

The NALP number represents 26% of the 954 new graduates who took jobs within the federal government in 2023, underscoring that honors programs are key pipelines into federal public service.

It's unclear whether the honors program job revocations extend beyond the Justice Department, though commenters on Reddit and other online forums reported cuts at other agencies.

“I am beyond devastated,” wrote a Reddit user who said Wednesday that their honors program position was revoked by the DOJ. “This was my dream career.”

Casaleggi said that two current students at The University of Chicago had their honors program offers revoked by the Justice Department and the school is working to confirm the status of students who had offers at other federal agencies.

A number of law schools that typically send students into federal honors programs, including Harvard Law School, Yale Law School, the University of Virginia School of Law and Georgetown University Law Center, did not respond or declined to comment on Thursday.

Students whose offers were rescinded this week received a brief email from the Justice Department’s Office of Attorney Recruitment and Management attributing the move to the “hiring freeze announced January 20, 2025,” according to posts on Reddit.

Georgetown law professor Stephen Vladeck said rescinding accepted job offers is “just being cruel for the sake of being cruel” in a Thursday post on social media platform Bluesky. He did not respond on Thursday to a request for further comment.

Casaleggi said her office is counseling students to consider state and local government opportunities amid the upheaval in Washington.

“It’s unfortunate for the students, but it’s also cutting off that pipeline for people who want to do government service,” Casaleggi said of federal agencies cutting programs for law students.