At the top end, MC firms have been suffering from a two-year M&A drought - Linklaters’ revenues are down nearly 9 per cent, Allen & Overy has seen a 4 per cent fall and Clifford Chance is understood to be facing a 5 per cent sales drop. Elswhere results have been all over the place but there’s an underlying trend of less work combined with more efficiency. June ended with the biggest legal victim of the recesssion so far with the demise of Halliwells and lately, it emerged that Beachcroft has decided to slash the number of trainee places for both September 2010 and 2011.

But it’s not all bad.

Trainee solicitors have edged ahead as the top earners in the Association of Graduate Recruiters’ (AGR) summer survey. According to the research, law offers the highest starting salaries for graduates at £36,500, a 4.3% increase on the average figure of £35,000 reported in 2009. In contrast, most graduates have seen salaries stagnate during the couse of the recession.

That’s about as cheerful as it gets though; law firms are predicting an 11.8% drop in graduate vacancies from 2009 to 2010 - rather steeper than the 6.9 per cent decline across all sectors. And somewhat depressing considering the drop of 8.9 per cent in 2009.

Economists have finally coined a new acronym for this environment in which we find ourselves, remember nice (noninflationary, consistently expansionary) - the folks at Morgan Stanley have moved to Grim – Growth Really Is Mediocre.