Despite the mutterings of green shoots and the worst is behind us, some pretty horrible headlines keep emerging to fill lawyers with a sense of dread. Take this one from the Times yesterday "UK legal industry faces losses of 10,000 lawyers " – not likley to provoke a spontaneous outbrake of joy in legal circles. To followers of legal news the gist of the headline may not come as a massive surprise given the unrelenting flow of redundancies (although the figure does focus the senses a bit) and the content of the article (which is not exactly optimistic, see selected extracts below) could even be met with a certain level of resignation…

As many as 10,000 lawyers could be out of work in the UK in the next two years as the legal business faces its worst slump in decades.

Lawyers who fall out of work have little hope of finding new jobs, with vacancies for associate solicitors down by 95 per cent this year, recruiters said. “It’s the worst year ever, by some margin,” Nick Root, founding partner of Taylor Root, a leading recruitment agency, said. “Those people who are being let go will not get another job.”

Discarded partners accustomed to earning more than £700,000-a-year have been shocked to find that they can command as little as £200,000 from the few firms that are hiring.

(If those snippets aren’t depressing enough for you, get the full and rather miserable picture by clicking here )

…but if as a lawyer you are expecting any sympathy think again – a number of commenters seem to lack any compassion for ousted lawyers. Take this humorous soul for example:

Joy! Thank you for a good news story at last..

C Smith, Norwich, UK

That bankers and politicians have taken a brutal beating on the popularity front is understandable (even if you might not entirely agree) given the recent economic and political crises. But what of lawyers? There still seems to be a perception that lawyers are just economic friction, no value added money-grabbers. No consideration is given to the study time or cost. So will lawyers always attract this sort of negativity? Probably, but at least someone understands.

Most lawyers earn between 25 and 50k- thats a fact but its not newsworthy .. most have slogged their entire life to get there and to earn that, wow, what a deal eh … the public only get to hear about the partners in the top 5 law firms in the UK – see the UK law society website for breakdown.

David , cork, ireland

Thanks David.