The rollercoaster continues lurching up and down. For private equity (PE) lawyers, it has been an eventful few years with advisers hard-pushed just to keep up with frenetic deal-doing during the boom years, only for the market to go into a sustained slump after 2007.

The industry went on to stage something of a modest comeback through 2011, but the latest indications confirm that buyout activity remains volatile to say the least – and 2012 has unsurprisingly proved a mixed year.