Of the cost-cutting trends finding favour amongst firms at the moment, this one doesn’t feel quite as harsh as others. Particularly when one considers the financial incentives on offer – a couple of weeks back, it came to light that Norton Rose were offering future trainees a whopping £10,000 to defer for start dates!

Baker & McKenzie has made a request for volunteers from its September 2009 and March and September 2010 intakes to defer. Deferrals are either for 6 or 12 months but only those who want to defer for 12 months have been offered a financial incentive – £5,000. Not as good as NR but still not bad.

Herbert Smith has also asked its trainees to defer in an apparent effort to ‘balance out’ intakes; again the incentive is thought to be around the £5,000 mark. Nearly 80 trainees due to start at the firm in September 2009 have been offered the chance to push back their start date to March 2010.

Given the current climate, the offers seem pretty reasonable. For uber keen lawyers-to-be it deferring might seem a little frustrating but there is plenty to be positive about. Feedback from lawyers on the front line paints a pretty grim picture at a lot of firms, with the atmosphere charred by recent redundancies and threats of more to come. The work, variety and volume, is clearly not what it was and £5-10k is quite a nice lump sum whatever you choose to do with it. So a bit cash and a bit of time waiting for things to improve might actually prove quite appealing…

Other firms that have offered deferrals are Simmons & Simmons, DLA and Lovells.