Denton Wilde Sapte will only be offering 17 out of 31trainees places when they qualify in September 2009 and Taylor Wessing is set to retain 13 of 24 trainees due to qualify in September. For both firms that represents only a little over half of their trainees at 54%.

Other firms in the City have seen retention rates falling including magic circle firms Allen & Overy, Clifford Chance and Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer although retention is still fairly strong at around …

The quietest week we’ve had on the redundancy front for a while and along comes the sad news of two celebrities dying in one day to cast a cloud. Farrah Fawcett, ’70s pin up and star of Charlie’s Angels probably got some partners’ hearts racing back in the day but her passing might not be quite as well remembered following the news of Michael Jackson’s death. Whatever one thought of the King of Pop, celebrities don’t come much bigger.

The …

The £22m credit-crunch related bill handed to the Treasury by Slaughter and May has been heavily criticised by the Lib Dems. The figures were released following a parliamentary question and showed that Slaughters was paid £22,150,000 for ‘financial stability related’ advice during 2008/09.

Lord Oakeshott, the Lib Dem Treasury spokesman, said: ‘This payment is simply mind blowing. It comes to £175,000 for every single equity partner of the law firm.

‘How can the Treasury defend allowing the firm to run up …

A plea for help…

Certain trends emerged in the profession as the economic downturn took hold – restructuring, redundancies and falling financial results to name a few. In recent news, Ahsurst’s financials have revealed a 40% drop in their corporate group’s results as compared to last year, BLP have laid off 85 following a consultation in May and one south-eastern firm, Buss Murton, has narrowly escaped total collapse having just emerged from Company Voluntary Arrangement (source ). The lasting effects of these factors …

Clifford Chance is to retain 70% of trainees from its September intake. A total of 49 trainees will stay on out of 70 due to qualify. This is a 10% drop on the previous figure when the firm offered 80% of trainees a job at the firm.

Although the figures are down, it is about on a par with other City firms that have made announcements recently. Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, Herbert Smith and Allen & Overy have all seen trainee …

Despite the fact that law firms are generally seeing growth (albeit at a slower rate than previously) news of 10,000 expected job losses still strikes a chilling chord for those at the bottom of the chain. At the same time, the results of Legal Week’s staisfaction survey hints that such worrying statistics may also be changing young lawyers’ perceptions of what they can expect in a legal career and therefore what they find satisfying. Actually having a job and …

If you like your humour on the intellectual side or your commercial awareness laced with a bit of humour, this may be for you. Not strictly ‘legal’ and not Jack Dee but it should appeal to those with even a passing interest in economics. So that’s just about everyone at the moment then…

A fine bit of

Berwin Leighton Paisner has completed its May redundancy consultation – 85 members of staff are to be laid off. The redundancies were a mixed bag with 47 compulsory, 32 staff voluntary and six early retirements. The redundancies will affect the firm’s corporate, finance and real estate practices as well as support functions including IT, accounts, marketing and human resources.

Meanwhile Clifford Chance is looking to transfer various back-office functions to India which is likely to see up to 100 positions …

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 …

Mixed bag as Stephenson Harwood and Kennedys release their results. Stephenson Harwood kept turnover level at £85.1m for the 2008-09 financial year with profits per equity partner down slightly slightly by 1.6% from £620,000 to £610,000.

Kennedys, the commercial litigation specialist firm has jumped into the UK’s top 50 law firms, posting a 30% increase in revenue for 2008-09 of £67.3m during the last financial year up from £51.5m the previous year. Meanwhile, profits per equity partner increased by almost …

Despite the mutterings of green shoots and the worst is behind us, some pretty horrible headlines keep emerging to fill lawyers with a sense of dread. Take this one from the Times yesterday "UK legal industry faces losses of 10,000 lawyers " – not likley to provoke a spontaneous outbrake of joy in legal circles. To followers of legal news the gist of the headline may not come as a massive surprise given the unrelenting flow of redundancies (although …

After a fresh spate of redundancy announcements last week, there is some cause for cautious optimism to start this week off. Deloitte’s Quarterly Legal Sector Survey has found that Fee income at the UK’s Top 100 law firms increased by 6.3% in Q1 (the quarter ended 31 July 2008) compared with the same period last year. Although the rate of growth has slowed across the profession, the top 10 firms still achieved double digit growth at 11.1%. Although revenue …

A certain saying springs to mind this week, well a perverted version of it at any rate. Keep your job whilst all around you are losing theirs. If the British public need leading by example then we have a leader like no other when it come to that particular skill. The saving of PM Brown was almost as contrived as the history portrayed by Saving Private Ryan and now that the Normandy beaches have been renamed after the American …

More I’m afraid. Pinsent Masons has joined the throng of firms making redundancies. The firm has proposed a variety of measures which it hopes will help avoid extensive layoffs at the firmwhich will include: sabbaticals, secondments, pay freezes and part-time working. The number of jobs under threat is not therefore clear at this stage but those at risk are likely to include both fee-earners and support staff. The cuts come after the firm saw a slight risse in turnover …

They keep on coming. Following a reported 17% drop in turnover, Wragge & Co has announced a second redundancy round with up to 85 people facing the axe. Fee-earners, support staff and secretaries will all be in the firing line. Revenues at the firm have fallen from £125.6m in 2007-08 to £104.3m in this year’s results; profits per equity partner have not yet been finalised but some commentators have estimated it at 30% less than last year’s figure …

With many firms looking to reduce costs by outsourcing to countries like India, it’s refreshing to see someone swimming against the current trend. Andrew Rigby of Scottish law firm Brodies is attending the Nasscom business process outsourcing (BPO) summit in India with a delegation from Scottish government and industry. His apparent aim is to convince Indian outsourcers that opening hubs in places such as Scotland could save them money, create new business opportunities and avoid the increase of Western …

With many NQs and associates seeing salaries cut, private practice lawyers may feel a tinge of envy at the thought of their contemporaries in banks getting an increase in pay. Research by recruitment consultants Sheffield Haworth found that a number of banks have increased wages for their internal legal personnel, in some cases by as much as 20%.

UBS, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley have all increased wages for in-house lawyers in a bit to offset some of the falls …

Despite a 5% increase in turnover from £421.8m to £444m this year,  Herbies is likely to see PEP drop by between 12 and 22 per cent compared to last year. At the end of the 2007-08 financial year PEP stood at just over the £1m mark for the first time.

Few firms are expecting to better last year’s results but the change in fortunes is made more stark in this case as both revenue and pep increased by 25% for …

According to the Gazette , Magic circle firm Clifford Chance will report a 5% fall in revenue and profits ‘significantly down’ on last year’s £1.33bn. David Childs the firm’s global managing partner apparently said that the firm will cut around 15% of its equity partners at the end of its ongoing staff restructuring.

Meanwhile, Hammonds hasn’t quite forced a massive holiday upon everyone but it has ­introduced mandatory ­sabbaticals for all associates in its corporate department in a bid to cut costs. …