Feckless Generation Y assistants refusing to play ball. The fading lure of partnership. Droves of women turning away from law – all these trends have been held up as largely irreversible forces plaguing law firms in the 21st century. The logic ran that large firms were culturally and structurally ill-equipped to deal with such seismic shifts, leaving the partnership model living on borrowed time, at least according to the gloomier prophets. 
All of which makes it slightly inconvenient that the definitive annual snapshot of attitudes among lawyers at leading commercial firms from Legal Week’s research arm, Legal Week Intelligence, reveals a dynamic that on the majority of yardsticks is moving in the opposite direction to that received wisdom.
