Despite the torrent of bad news for associates over the last 12 months, a recent survey by Legal Week has found a surprising level of satisfaction amongst the junior ranks of the profession. With uncertainty over the future and large scale restructuring involving redundanices and trainee deferrals, the survey may be the first bit of positive news for the management when it comes to morale. Although most firms saw a relative decline in satisfaciton, the results were not as horrifying as one might have expected.

According to Legal Week, the satisfaction ranking is based on ‘core’ criteria that respondents said were the most important to them: prestige of firm; work/life balance; being valued as an employee; culture; quality of work; client interaction; salary; bonus; career communication; partnership prospects; and billable hours expectations.

The survey was conducted in March/April and in the top five were BLP , Camerons , Norton Rose , A&O and Bird & Bird . Whether this remains the case now is a different matter as BLP and Camerons have announced redundancy programmes since the results came in.

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