The wave of cutbacks among the battered US legal technology specialists continued last month as Brobeck Phleger & Harrison asked half of its new intake of associates to defer for more than a year.

San Francisco-based Brobecks has offered about 30 lawyers, who were due to start this autumn, a package to defer their start date until January 2004. The group makes up half of Brobecks’ annual intake of junior associates.