A source has told RollOnFriday that Wragges Birmingham has offered trainees due to start with the firm in September £5,000 to defer for a year.

This kind of offer brings back rather unhappy memories from 2010, when firms which had made offers to swathes of trainees in the heady, pre-credit crunch days suddenly found themselves unable to accommodate them all when times got tough.

But it's a fairly unusual state of affairs now and Wragges doesn't seem to be doing too badly. Whilst the firm's Managing Partner did claim that targets had been missed for 2011/12 , according to a Legal Week report, turnover still rose by 5%. Not too shabby in a tricky market.