Solicitr had an eventful week in Manchester this week with the Business North West (BNW) exhibition and the Manchester Law Fair providing an escape from their PCs and some social interaction…

The BNW exhibition had variety of speakers (none of the legal variety but interesting nonetheless) including a chap from Facebook, former Apprentice candidates Kristina Grimes and Jennifer Celerier and Darryn Lyons from Big Pictures – (very) straight-talking Aussie photographer.

A quick poll of Solicitr’s team on the ground put Lyndsay Menzies of bigmouthmedia at the top of the ‘most informative and useful speaker’ stakes. The Manchester Law Fair was also the most impressive visited by the Solicitr team so far. But how useful are these fairs?? (other than to get free frizbees, yo-yos, electric shocks etc)? Maybe not as useful as the firms imagine (to be explored..).

After all the excitement we wouldn’t want to dwell on misery but there’s no escaping the fact that it’s been another painful week on the redundancy front. Orrick, Nabarro and Hammonds announced cuts early in the week and now Mayer Brown, Squire Sanders & Dempsey have followed suit becoming the latest firms to make redundancies. Meanwhile, Field Fisher Waterhouse has launched a second redundancy consultation with approximately 175 of its UK-based support staff (around 40 may lose their jobs).

Anyway, enough of the bad news, here’s something a bit different:

"Nick would walk down the hallway with black eyes and a broken nose. The students who didn’t know him would say, ‘Whatever firm he works for, I don’t want to go there,’"…

One brave law student has hedged his employment bets in a somewhat interesting manner by pursuing a separate career alongside the law. University of Minnesota lawgrad, Nick "The Goat" Thompson , featured in a Sports Illustrated article on an ultimate fighting EliteXC tournament broadcast on CBS.

According to Above the Law Thompson lost his match, but had a good excuse: studying for his bar exam. He took the Minnesota bar two days after the match. ATL has a full interview (click here ) of the hard man of law revealing details of the 20-30 hours per week he spent gym training for Ultimate Fighting whilst studying the rest of the time.

Talking of getting tough; as the economic climate declines, it seems that authorities like to go after those sitting pretty on piles of cash. One example that cropped up this week was the case brought by the Solicitors Regulation Authority against Doncaster-based Beresfords Solicitors.

Beresford became the UK’s richest lawyer in the 2005-06 financial year, having taken home a total of £16.8m in the 12-month period. Jim Beresford and his colleague Douglas Smith are now facing 11 allegations of misconduct.

The duo’s lead counsel Alan Gourgey QC of 11 Stone Buildings told the tribunal: “We say that there is absolutely nothing wrong in a firm earning substantial fees from the conduct of its business.” Quite.

And finally, SJ Berwin partner Jonathan Djanogly, who is Conservative MP for Huntingdon, has been criticised by his Westminster opponents after using the firm’s trainees for parliamentary research work. This sounds like an fantastic opportunity for trainees although the error on his part looks to have put that in jeapoardy. On the other side, one would think that politicians ought to be encouraging such interaction but nothing seems to get in the way of a bit of political point scoring these days…