In the run up to the bank holiday weekend its always hard to concentrate on the work at hand. This year it might be less of an issue though – we are still hearing from many of you that work is not exactly abundant. This has prompted fear of more potential redundancies in the Autumn, fingers crossed that doesn’t happen. On the other hand we have had a fair bit of feedback suggesting some people are very busy picking up the pieces left by colleagues forced out by redundancy programmes. Swings and roundabouts.

One place where junior lawyers (all two of them) won’t be feeling the pressure of senior supervision is Shearman & Sterling’s Brussels office. The US firm’s Brussels outpost has been left with no permanent partner presence after the two partners chose to defect to US rival Arnold & Porter. Party time.

If you think lawyers have to be making money to be busy, think again. One of the silver linings to come out of the downturn is that there has been a surge in pro bono work provided by lawyers as a result of the recession. The Gazette reports that Charity LawWorks have found the increase stems from a combination of a greater need for pro bono work and the fact that some solicitors are ‘underemployed’.

Busy evolving the business of law, Tesco have managed to grab the lion’s share of headlines – they made over £3bn profit last year, have signalled a move into financial services and are known to be warming up for some legal domination with "Tesco Law". But they haven’t got it all their own way – Co-op has already been promoting legal services to 17 million weekly shoppers in its stores in preparation for the Big Bang reforms of the Legal Services Act 2007. Critics talk of degrading quality professional service for profit; cynics argue that this happened a long time ago.

Meanwhile, with everyone else on holiday; Peter Mandleson or PM for short has been trying to meddle with piracy laws and get ISPs to cut off offenders. All to appease his wealthy, villa and lots of IP rights owning, creative industry friends apparently. Although he denies it obviously. We were under the impression that was the main reason he was in the news this week but, according to Frankie Boyle of Mock the Week fame, it’s actually because he is building a death star; we quote, "What’s with him, he’s so evil he just keeps coming back stronger….like thrush".

Enjoy the bank holiday and remember, try to remember it if you can .