After a fresh spate of redundancy announcements last week, there is some cause for cautious optimism to start this week off. Deloitte’s Quarterly Legal Sector Survey has found that Fee income at the UK’s Top 100 law firms increased by 6.3% in Q1 (the quarter ended 31 July 2008) compared with the same period last year. Although the rate of growth has slowed across the profession, the top 10 firms still achieved double digit growth at 11.1%. Although revenue growth continued in Q1, the rate of growth has halved compared with that achieved in the previous quarter.  In the prior year the top 100 firms grew by 12.0% in Q4, 10.6% in Q3, 12.5% in Q2 and 15.1% in Q1.

Jeremy Black, associate partner in Deloitte’s Professional Practices group, said: “The sector faces a challenging year with tough economic conditions expected to continue for the foreseeable future.  However, in such an environment average growth of over 6% is still impressive and reflects the resilience of the industry to the downturn ."

The latest firm to release its figures is Norton Rose. The firm’s revenues rose 6% to £314m compared with the previous year’s figure of £297m but PEP fell by 17% down to £517,000 from last year’s figure of £625,000. The fall in partner profits has been put down to the fact that the firm has implemented flexible working arrangements in favour of reducing headcount.

Having followed a similar strategy in order to minimise layoffs, BPE Solicitors has just moved the 13 members of staff who were put on a four-day week in January back up to full-time working. (The Lawyer )

Whilst the furure isn’t quite orange there certainly seems to be a little more brightness creeping through the rubble…