The student survey from Legal Week rates Allen & Overy as the most prestigious global law firm, Bird & Bird the best City firm and Eversheds the regional favorite. Which is a coup for their graduate recruitment and PR departments.

Notably, the survey didn’t find a link between the redundancies of last year and firms’ abilities to woo the students. Which might not be that surprising – there weren’t many firms that didn’t wield the axe – and you’d have needed to pay fairly close attention to the carnage to decide who offered the most humane methods of execution. And the least.

What might have been more interesting would be to see what trainees and NQs thought by comparison when asked the same questions for the same period. We’re not saying the results would be entirely different (they might be) but it would give you some idea of who had the best PR/HR combo and which firms were actually highly rated from the other side of the fence.

Branded stress balls and crap yoyos don’t really swing it when you’re on the treadmill.