We track the Australian legal job market one week at a time: every Monday we record every lawyer role advertised on the careers pages of 31 firms. We have now done that for two months. The headline number turns out to be the least interesting thing in the data.

Across the sixteen largest firms we track, the count of open lawyer roles has sat between 249 and 264 since early September. It was 249 on 9 September and 253 on 8 November. If you only looked at the total, you would conclude nothing happened.

Plenty happened. In a typical week, between 16 and 43 roles appeared that were not there seven days earlier, and a similar number came down. In the week to 18 October, 43 roles went up and 44 came off. The board looked almost identical. Almost none of the roles on it were the same.

That is the first thing worth understanding about this market. A flat total is not a quiet market. It is a market where the rate of hiring and the rate of roles being filled happen to be running at about the same speed.

Which leads to the second point. We can follow an individual advert from the week it appears to the week it disappears. The median advert was visible for about three weeks. Forty per cent were gone inside a fortnight. Fewer than one in five were still up after five weeks.

For a lawyer watching the market, that is the practical finding. The role you noticed and decided to think about over the weekend has a reasonable chance of being gone by the end of the month. Firms are not leaving these open for a quarter.

Underneath the flat total, the mix has moved. Comparing the September scans against the most recent three, disputes and litigation is the clearest growth area, up from an average of 24 open roles to 33. Funds, superannuation and financial services rose from 12 to 17. Tax went from three to seven, off a small base.

In the other direction, competition and regulatory fell from nine to five, intellectual property from eight to five, and environment and planning from ten to eight.

Corporate and M&A has been the steadiest line in the data, moving between 35 and 38 roles the whole time, and banking and finance sits just behind it. These remain the two deepest pools of work in the market. Corrs Chambers Westgarth, Allens and King & Wood Mallesons have carried the largest advertised boards throughout, averaging 39, 35 and 30 open lawyer roles respectively.

Two smaller observations. Senior associate roles made up 53 per cent of advertised lawyer positions at the large firms in early September. They are now 47 per cent, with associate and lawyer roles taking up the difference. It is a modest shift, but the recruiting has moved slightly down the PQE band over the two months.

On geography, Sydney accounts for 43 per cent of advertised roles and Melbourne 22 per cent. Brisbane, at 18 per cent, is closer to Melbourne than most people assume. Perth is 9 per cent.

Two caveats worth stating plainly. An advertisement is not a hire, and a role coming down does not always mean someone was appointed. And this only counts what firms choose to put on a public careers page. A meaningful share of senior moves never appears on one at all, which is its own point about how this market works.

We keep the full list and update it weekly. If you want to know what is open in your practice area, or what has been moving at a particular firm, it is an easy conversation to have.