We’ve been hearing all around us that these are challenging times. Layoffs are coming down in full force. Law firm associates, and even sometimes partners, are being axed in unprecedented numbers in the U.S. and the U.K. legal markets. Insiders say Canada’s legal market is nowhere close to that point, but there is still evidence of firms quietly getting rid of some lawyers.

In February, Statistics Canada reported that 129,000 people had lost their jobs over the course of the previous month. Hardest hit was Ontario, with 71,000 positions vanishing. While most of those were cut from the manufacturing sector, there’s no doubt the legal profession is facing some tough times. Doom and gloom stories are plentiful, but what’s the real story for anyone working their way through law school? If you’re just starting the path to entering the profession, is it time to start getting concerned?

Guy Joubert, president of the Canadian Bar Association, says there may be some worry for current articling students looking to make the transition into an associate position. “I think that it [is] a realistic assessment,” he says. “If law firms are focusing on trying to keep their associates and stabilizing their staff and lawyer compliment, they may not necessarily take on as many students to start off with, and they may not necessarily keep on as many students as they have in the past.”

As anyone in the legal field will tell you, anxiety is a normal part of any law student’s life. It’s filled with exams, with applications, with interviews. But the economic conditions are adding another layer, and extending that fear into the lives of articling students who in the past may have felt quite secure in being offered an associate position. “I certainly think that there’s a sense of concern amongst our articling student group,” says Michelle Gage, director of student and associate programs in Ontario for Ogilvy Renault LLP. The firm hasn’t yet announced its hire-back decisions — that will happen in the spring — so she says she can understand the feelings students may be experiencing. “Having said that, articling students always experience anxiety around hire-back decisions,” she adds.

In addition, Gage says: “We are very fortunate in our diversity of practice here at the firm; it keeps us pretty well-positioned to weather these kinds of economic storms. We have strength in a lot of areas that are counter-cyclical, whether it’s restructuring, bankruptcy/insolvency work, employment and labour work — we’re in fact actively seeking to add an associate to our Toronto employment and labour group right now. So we’re not being impacted perhaps in the same way as our friends at other firms might be.”

Carol Chestnut is the director of student and associate programs for Stikeman Elliott LLP’s Vancouver office. She says there’s no need for concern with her students either. While Chestnut is careful to point out they only have a small office, and it would be difficult to derive any trends from it, the economy has not been playing a role in their hire-back decisions. “We have historically had very good hire-back rates, but we only hire three students. So it’s not like we’ve got 15 of whom we routinely hire 13, and last year only hired two,” she says. In September, they did choose to hire back only two of their three students, but she says the decision to not make an offer to the third was based on circumstances that have nothing to do with the economy.

Chestnut says they have a fantastic group of students, and great clients with plenty of work. “I don’t think we ever have, and certainly this year we would not let the economy dictate whether or not we kept on an excellent student. If somebody’s good, they’ll be kept on — we can afford to do it because we’re talking about small numbers.”

Things appear to have been relatively stable up to this point, but it’s what to come that has some worried. “The firms have slowed down,” says Adam Lepofsky, president of RainMaker Group, a legal recruitment firm. “2008 was still a very good year for everybody, off of 2007. 2007 was so tremendous — you run on the fumes — and 2008 was still a very good, strong year, for everyone. But it’s what [is] in the pipeline, or what’s coming down the pipeline, which is what we’re looking at.”

“We have not yet noticed a decline in large firm hiring as these firms have generally indicated that they are biding their time and watching,” says Lisa Blair, assistant dean of student services with the University of Ottawa. The mechanics of the hiring process gives some cushioning to these types of situations, she says. “Due to the early legal recruiting cycle, hiring being done now is for students who will not start articling for another 18 months, so the system is somewhat protected from immediate or reactionary fluctuations.”