Editor's blog | Victorian values

The law is a bit like collectable Victorian crockery: a little old fashioned but safe, something whose value is relatively immune to the ups and downs of economic cycles. And so far, law firms have been particularly resilient to the tightening grip of the recession. There have been some notable casualties - Halliwells, Cobbets, Atteys - and many firms have made staff redundant. But in the main, the sector has had a much better survival rate than retailers on the high street.

Even the Law Society's latest figures attest to the relative solidity of the sector. Sure, the number of law firms, after an all-time high in 2010, went down last year, to what it was in 2007. But there are plenty of reassuring findings in this year's Law Society's annual statistics report.

There are more solicitors on the roll (+4.4 per cent) and even more with practising certificates (+5.61 per cent). The expectation that sole practitioners and smaller firms would be worst hit by the recession proves founded; their numbers have dropped by 2.5 and 1.1 per cent respectively. But look at other firms: firms with five to ten partners are up 5.3 per cent, 11-25 partner firms up 2.5 per cent, and 26-80 partner firms up 1.5 per cent. The top bracket - 81+ partner firms - bulged by a remarkable 16 per cent, a number easily achieved at that level by a clutch of mergers that propelled the combined firms concerned one tier up.

Another set of findings sheds an intriguing light on solicitors in the employed sector. Overall numbers have gone up 1.56 per cent. Growth was driven mainly by solicitors employed in commerce and industry (+5.18 per cent), which helped compensate job losses in government (-4.26 per cent). And there is an interesting 9.85 per cent rise of lawyers working for accountants (although the number of individual concerned remains small: 145).

The picture painted by these figures is one of a profession in transition. They warn of a future which is in fact less promising than some of the numbers would let you believe. Look, for instance, at the number of solicitors with practising certificates but "not attached to an organisation" - i.e. with no permanent work - which shot up by 96.53 per cent. There were 6,795 of them in 2011; last year their number nearly doubled to 13,354. Things are not looking good at the junior end of the profession either, with the number of training contracts falling to its lowest level, 4,869, since 1999.

The number of bigger law firms may be growing but not the number of solicitors in private practice. Under financial pressure, law firms are lowering work to more cost-effective professionals. And as law schools continue to churn out new graduates, more end up without a training contract or job. Only last week, senior lawyers who took part in a joint NatWest-Solicitors Journal roundtable acknowledged that lack of business made it difficult to recruit laterally or even grow organically. The news from the SRA is no better, with 150 firms apparently in 'very significant financial difficulty'.

The law is a bit like collectable Victorian crockery. Which also means that when it breaks, you can stick it back together, but it will never look the same again.

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