Like self-employed doctors or indeed barristers, solicitors are not feted for their business management skills. However, this year’s LMS Financial Benchmarking Survey gives one cause to reconsider that cliched perception.

The survey shows that smaller firms acted quickly and imaginatively to address the challenges posed by the worst recession in decades. Redundancy was common, but practices also held the line by making widespread use of short-term working, and offering alternative benefits such as extra holiday instead of pay increases. Practices did not cut the number of fee-earners in the same proportion as income fell, suggesting that they have learned from the last recession in the early 1990s. Support staff were far more vulnerable.

Of course, the survey is limited to members of the Law Society’s Law Management Section, who might be expected to be attuned to best practice in such matters. But let’s not be cynical. A decent sample of nearly 200 firms suggests that practices are alive to the changing market and adapting their business models accordingly, an encouraging portent as market conditions stabilise.

It’s probably too early to talk of recovery, with an average growth forecast of precisely 0% for 2010. But even this is progress of sorts, suggesting the market has at least bottomed out at a time when firms are better equipped than they were to exploit any upturn.