And the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) has just said the jobs market was still “on the ropes” with one in six employers planning redundancies in the first three months of the year.

Although further redundancies haven’t been mentioned in the legal sector recently; earlier this week, Herbert Smith decided to implement a further round of trainee solicitor deferrals. As we said then, two doesn’t make a trend but if others see Herbies’ action as a green light, the junior bottleneck from this recession could get even worse.

The Herbies incentive may help put others off. Peers are now faced with forking out 10 grand per trainee for the luxury of further deferrals or looking like tightarses by comparison. But in reality, if it comes to it, partners are accustomed battlehardened when it comes to making tough choices these days.

On the lull in redundancy news, chief economic adviser at the CIPD John Philpott said the relatively robust jobs market of recent months was “a mere pause for breath” and warned that there were “more testing rounds ahead”.

Something else mentioned in the report that lawyers are already familiar with – one in ten firms are planning to outsource to India or Eastern Europe.