The news that recruitment in the legal sector has bucked the downward trend of graduate recruitment generally has not made for a less tense environment. Training contract deferral rumours have been banded about for some time and a number of firms have actually come clean and made it open that they are offering this to future trainees.

Simmons & Simmons were the first, shortly followed by DLA and Lovells . As we have seen, these moves seem to open the door for other firms to follow suit and right on cue Freshfields has announced that it has asked some of its trainees to push back their start dates in a bid to “even out” the size of its intakes. Currently 64 trainees are due to start in August 2010 and 32 are set to join the following February. According to Freshfields UK trainee recruitment head Deborah Dalgleish, there is a general trend of people favouring a summer start date over a winter one so they try to balance out the intakes with deferrals.

Whilst this might be troubling news for some (equally it might be great for those who fancy a bit of a break – some of these dererrals have a financial incentive!); Legal Week has identified a number of firms that intend to stick with their current intake schedules: Clifford Chance, Allen & Overy, Linklaters, Ashurst and Slaughter and May have all confirmed that they are not intending to ask prospective trainees to push back their start dates with the firms.

But…

Herbert Smith and Norton Rose have apparently admited they are looking at the situation.