This is unlikely to make anyone feel better about the current situation in the UK, but US firms had a terrible day of redundancies yesterday with over 800 associates and legal staff laid off across the country. Eight firms carried out mass job cuts and the resulting armageddon has provoked a lot of commentary not least from Above the Law :

"As I said earlier, maybe we can explain some of this by a collective attempt to avoid giving people bad news on Friday the 13th. It could also be an attempt by firms to let people go before anybody takes off for the long weekend coming up.

Still, it seems to me like today deserves its own special name. Sure we can call it "black Thursday," that’s already happened before."

Although things have not been quite as bad over here; it has still been a pretty torrid week for UK lawyers. Dickinson Dees kicked off a new redundancy consultation yesterday , with up to 90 jobs at the firm under threat (15 lawyers may face the axe). The firm’s offices in Newcastle and York will be affected across all departments with property looking most vulnerable.

The embattled London office of US firm Cadwalader Wickersham & Taft has seen a redundancy consultation launched less than a month after losing seven of its partners and 12 associates to Paul Hastings. According to The Lawyer sources close to the firm said the consultation is likely to result in three lawyers, three paralegals and 10 support staff losing their jobs.

Magic Circle firm, Clifford Chance, only recently launched a formal redundancy consultation but according to Legal Week it is also in talks with associates about voluntary redundancies. One CC lawyer told Legal Week that the firm has been offering associates the chance to leave the firm voluntarily, at the same time as proceeding with the formal redundancy consultation that could see up to 80 fee earner jobs in London affected.

And following Lovells’ recent redundancy announcement, the firm has now written to all of its prospective trainees asking for volunteers to defer their training contract start dates.

So at a time when the streets seems to be awash with blood, it was interesting to note in Legal Week that Linklaters senior partner David Cheyne has rejected calls for top law firms to cut rates in response to the downturn. His line of argument – that clients would not respect firms for slashing rates – seems a little counter-intuitive at the moment don’t you think and his MC contemporaries did not entirely agree either!