For the past month redundancy announcements by law firms have been coming thick and fast like casualty figures from a war zone. Almost none of the Top 100 firms is exempt. One day it’s Addleshaw Goddard revealing that 35 will go, the next that Dickinson Dees has upped its total to 154. Every now and again there is a shocking landmark figure — most significantly, probably, 80 at Clifford Chance. Even a smart, cool firm such as Olswang is letting 55 go.

They all add up. According to the running total kept by The Lawyer, the trade paper, the figure at the start of this week was almost 2,200 redundancies announced in the present round. Of course, this is just an indicative figure. Although some firms come clean about the number of partners being shown the door — a staggering 70 at Linklaters, for example — other firms are more discreet about their partner departures. Let’s just say it’s lots.

Put it all together and the emotional impact is proving traumatic for a generation of young lawyers brought up with a sense of entitlement. The backlash has come in criticism of the way the redundancy announcements have been handled. A profession that is used to whispering to the press now leaks key redundancy moves out before they are communicated properly to the staff.

Striking the right tone is bound to be difficult. For example, Linklaters has earned some notoriety by being bullish about the whole exercise, indicating that it is using the economic crisis to remodel itself as smaller, leaner and potentially more profitable for the new world that lies somewhere over the rainbow.

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This may not have been popular but at least it was plausible. In other firms one had to wonder which planet, let alone new world, the partners were on. According to The Lawyer, equity partners at DLA Piper have made it clear that they did not expect the firm’s average profits per partner to drop despite the economic collapse. The firm is making 176 redundant.

It is these sentiments of greed that fuel resentment. From the perspective of the five-year-qualified associate, jobs are being sacrificed to enable grasping partners to hang on to their ill-gotten gains. Yet, bluntly, anyone who joined a commercial law firm unaware that the partners’ profit was not the priority was sadly naive.

The external consultants’ view on these developments is clear and consistent. Giles Rubens, of Hildebrandt, says that most firms “could not have done anything significantly different” given the prevailing conditions in the market. Tony Williams, of Jomati, added that: “On the whole it has been well-handled. Firms have tried to avoid the knee-jerk reactions to tougher conditions but it’s also important that decisions are taken sooner rather than later so that people know where they stand. Given the high salaries that are paid to associates it is not possible to carry them indefinitely if the work is not there.”

Clearly the work is not there so profits are almost certainly bound to follow suit. The prediction is that, among second and third-tier firms, profits could be down by as much as 50 per cent. In these circumstances it is impossible for the headcount to stay the same.

As Alan Hodgart, of H4 Partners, points out, the economic crisis has forced firms to look closely at performance management issues. In the past five years firms grew because of the benign economy. It did not mean that they were good lawyers — just that a lot of legal work needed to be done. Now with much less work the clients can pick and choose — and the less effective partners and staff stand out. “To hold on to under performing partners in times such as these is actually demoralising for the staff,” Hodgart says. “With hindsight, perhaps firms took on more people than they should have done and promoted to equity partner people who really weren’t up to it. But if the work is rolling in then it’s difficult to resist that temptation.”

So what we are going through, Rubens says, is an “accelerated form of what would have happened anyway”. Commercial law firms blossomed not because they were truly excellent but because there was need for them in the giddy, credit-driven world of the early and mid Noughties. It was a bubble that swelled many pretty average law firms. It has now burst.

As it happens, Gareth Quarry, of Shilton Sharpe Quarry, is confident that good partners in top-end — first and second-tier — firms will find new jobs farther down the pecking order. Associates, though, may find it much more difficult. “The associate recruitment market is virtually dead,” he says.

Williams believes that after a couple of very difficult years the good times will start to come back. But the shape of the profession will have changed. The ratio of associates to partners is likely to drop and, aided by the Legal Services Act 2007, there will be a whole new approach to outsourcing and technology. Maybe that branding of new world is not so wrong after all.

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