According to Legal Week the bulk of the City’s top 10 law firms have denied that they would be following rival Clifford Chance with formal redundancies in London in the immediate future. Only Linklaters apparently refused to comment but all of the others confirmed that they had no lawyers lined up for a bit of paring. Some sighs of relief may be in order for now then but lets not forget the mood of the season. The consensus seems to be that economic flower houses and Solicitr’s chrysanthemum patch are not yet showing the green shoots of recovery after all this frost.

Aside from the home grown legal flowers, US firm Cadwalader Wickersham & Taft seems to be having a rough time at the moment having recently announced a 30 per cent drop in profits in 2008, with average profit per equity partner dropping from $2.72m in 2007 to $1.88m. Adding insult to injury, the firm is having to parachute managing partner and former chairman Bob Link into its London patch after announcing yesterday that of seven of its partners were jumping ship.

It is understood that they will now join rival US firm Paul Hastings Janofsky & Walker. The partners seeking new pastures in which to flourish are office head Michelle Duncan, restructuring litigator Karl Clowry, capital markets partner Conor Downey, real estate finance partner Justin Jowitt, financial services partner Tom O’Riordan and capital markets partners Christian Parker and Charles Roberts, representing a big blow for the Cad’s City office.