Justice Department faces lawyer staffing crisis, causing delays
Lawyers at the U.S. Department of Justice have had to repeatedly ask for delays in a variety of cases, inadvertently revealing that the department faces a massive staffing crisis. (Photo by Kevin Lamarque/Reuters)
Lawyers at the U.S. Department of Justice have had to repeatedly ask for delays in a variety of cases, inadvertently revealing that the department faces a massive staffing crisis.
There were an estimated 10,000 attorneys working across the DOJ before President Donald Trump returned to the White House in January 2025. By September 2025, that number appears to have been nearly cut in half, according to a story by the New Republic.
The Justice Connection, an advocacy group that tracks DOJ departures, estimates that around 5,500 people (not all of them attorneys) have left the department—either by quitting, transfer, accepting the Trump administration’s buyout or being fired. The appellate section alone reportedly has lost over 40% of its attorneys since February 2025, according to the New Republic.
“Just a fraction” of the open positions at the DOJ have been filled, causing a backlog of cases, according to the story.
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