Following hot on the heels of Shoosmiths’ deferral announcement early last week, three more firms have followed suit.

LG has asked both its September 2009 and 2010 intakes to defer for 12 months for a cash payment of £5,000. The firm has also decided to stop recruiting for 2011.

Denton Wilde Sapte has contacted some of its trainee solicitors due to start in September 2009, March 2010, March 2011 and September 2011 requesting them to push back their start dates by …

Solicitr has been inundated with e-mails from concerned would-be Shoosmiths trainees…

There may well be times when standing out from the crowd is a good thing but we don’t think this is one of them…

The idealistic notion that the legal profession should become something of a pure meritocracy hasn’t always appealed to everyone. Conservative and slow to adopt change, the profession was long dominated by privately educated, predominantly white, middle-class men. The last decade or so has seen a marked change on this front and equality has improved greatly. However, does this mean unfair advantages can’t be sought elsewhere?

Que: Oxbridge Training Contracts , a company providing model essays and training contract and pupillage …

Hammonds has joined the list of firms offering future trainees cash incentives (£7,000 in London and £5,000 for those in the regions) to defer for a year. In a slight deviation from the standard offering The Lawyer reports that Hammonds’ future trainees will also be offered the option to take up a client secondment lasting between two and four months, for which they will be paid up to £1,000 for each month they work.

Although a deferral might not be …

With SRA rules preventing law firms from offering penultimate year law students training contracts until 1 September, Clifford Chance and Slaughters & May have already had to close applications for non-law grads. The firms have been so inundated with candidates that they have managed to fill their quotas for trainees with non-law backgrounds earlier than usual. The remaining places will be reserved for those studying law degrees who can only apply later in the year. Sensible planning you’d think.

Maybe, …

Halliwells has become the latest firm to defer training contracts. The firm has pushed back the start dates for its 2009 and 2010 trainee intakes. Half have had their start dates deferred by six months in return for a cash payment of £2,000 while the other half have scooped £4,000 for a twelve month deferral. The deferrals mean that the firm is now only accepting training contract applications commencing in March 2012.

Halliwells seems to have been hit pretty hard …

The end of last week saw Halliwells launch yet another round of redundancies – this is its fourth redundancy consultation in the last year. Another 30 staff face the axe and the entire 2009 trainee intake has been deferred. Equal numbers of fee earners and support staff are in the firing line.

The repeated redundancies must be taking their toll on morale at the firm as remaining staff wonder what’s on the horizon. All this on the back of …

Freshfields opened the door on pay freezes and now a number of its contemporaries have decided to saunter through it. Allen & Overy followed pretty hot on the heels of its MC rival (and did pretty much everything else they could to cut costs at the same time) and earlier this week Bircham Dyson Bell put the nitrous on salaries. Now Ashurst and Simmons & Simmons have also followed suit in an attmept to avoid further job losses.

Meanwhile, others …

You would be forgiven for thinking that this is not the biggest problem facing law firms right now – firing, not hiring seems to be the order of the moment…

However, a recent ruling by The Employment Appeal Tribunal means that firms refusing to consider training contract applications from students who would need a work permit are having to review the policy. (According to the Gazette , a number of the UK’s well known firms are understood to follow this …

Of the cost-cutting trends finding favour amongst firms at the moment, this one doesn’t feel quite as harsh as others. Particularly when one considers the financial incentives on offer – a couple of weeks back, it came to light that Norton Rose were offering future trainees a whopping £10,000 to defer for start dates!

Baker & McKenzie has made a request for volunteers from its September 2009 and March and September 2010 intakes to defer. Deferrals are either for 6 …

The news that recruitment in the legal sector has bucked the downward trend of graduate recruitment generally has not made for a less tense environment. Training contract deferral rumours have been banded about for some time and a number of firms have actually come clean and made it open that they are offering this to future trainees.

Simmons & Simmons were the first, shortly followed by DLA and Lovells . As we have seen, these moves seem to open the …

That didn’t take long! We speculated only yesterday that firms might follow the example of Field Fisher Waterhouse and Charles Russell by trimming their summer with vacation schemes. However, it seems A&O has looked at the more pressing issue of their Easter vac scheme – claiming in The Lawyer that they pulled it due to "lack of interest". Make of that what you will. We would hazard a guess that there might be just one or two law students out …

The Association of Graduate Recruiters bi-annual survey shows the impact that the downturn is having on  opportunities for university leavers. Vacancies have come down 5.4% in total compared to last year and starting salaries are frozen at the 2008 average of £25,000 (and down as much as 8% in the financial sector). However, graduate vacancies in the legal sector are set to rise by 2 per cent!

Just under half of the organisations surveyed (46%) expected to hire fewer graduates …

Distilling some droplets from the legal ether, here are some points of interest for the week.

One law firm ends up in hot water after it moves to dismiss a trainee for gross miscunduct – a Sheffield Employment Tribunal last week ruled that a Manchester firm, Express Solicitors, was in breach of the terms of a training contract when it dismissed trainee solicitor Iain Montgomery for ‘gross misconduct’ last year. See the Gazette for more.

Bernie Ecclestone has a change of …

You will have to excuse our Shakespearian jaunt, we couldn’t resist. Now and again Solicitr receives requests for career-oriented advice, some serious and some of a more humourous nature. Of course, most people like to throw in their tuppence on such issues and it is always interesting to get a broad smattering of opinion. Here we have a question that is pretty pertinent at the moment and whilst only two firms have admitted to offering this to prospective trainees, …