Tough times call for tough measures, and there is no doubt that firms have had to bite the bullet last year, letting go of large numbers of staff in the hardest hit areas such as property and corporate. The fall-off in work made redundancy programmes inevitable.But all along, consultants have warned firms to learn the lessons of the last recession, and hold something in reserve for when the market picks up. Don’t make the cuts too deep, they said, so that you have enough staff to bring in the fees when the economy improves.

And as the government informed us last week, the recession is now officially over – so corporate departments at least can expect their fee income to turn northwards for a change.

That’s good news for firms, and it is good news for the lawyers who managed to hang on to their jobs in areas like corporate, which are finally on the up. But for some of those lawyers, it is a mixed blessing.

Many firms – particularly, I have been told, regional practices – have been too heavy handed when it came to wielding the redundancy axe. They cut their departments right down to the bone, and now they are reluctant to recruit in case workloads dry up again in a double-dip recession.

The result: as the work comes in, there simply aren’t enough lawyers there to do it. That means longer hours for the ‘lucky’ ones who survived the redundancy rounds, and in some cases they are being unfairly stretched to the absolute limit.

No one wants to be the first to leave the office, and no one wants to be last in in the morning. Jackets are left hanging on the chair to give the appearance of being there at all times.

One corporate lawyer described to me a ‘climate of fear’ in some firms. With so many friends and colleagues already having been given the chop, no one is about to stick their neck out and complain. No one wants to lose their job in an environment where no firm is hiring.

And even if they do raise a murmur of protest, the attitude from partnership is that they are ‘lucky to have a job’.

Is this really the way to run a successful business? Yes, you can save on your overheads if you get one lawyer to do a double workload, rather than getting two in to work reasonable hours.

But do firms really want their fee-earning work performed by lawyers who are burnt out, fed up and miserable? Is someone drafting an intricate contact agreement at 2am going to be doing it with a sharp mind? Or will they be making careless, rushed mistakes that will cost the firm a heck of a lot more in the long run.

Yes, firms are nervous about hiring new staff in case work drops off again. That’s understandable. But look at it another way - with so many talented corporate and property lawyers out of work at the moment, now is actually a pretty good time to hire.

You don’t have to offer a top salary to get top lawyers right now. Indeed, there are probably plenty of very high-quality solicitors who would be willing to take on a six-month contract.

Even if firms are brave enough to offer permanent contracts, if the worst comes to the worst and recession does hit again in the coming year, the new recruits will not have been there long enough to build up much in the way of statutory redundancy entitlement. But at least they will have had a job in the meantime.

It seems to me that hiring the staff you need to make the most from the upturn, without stretching your existing lawyers to the point where they are about to snap, is the only sensible way forward.