Halliwells has revealed a turnover of £83m for the 2008-09 financial year, a drop of 4.6 per cent on last year’s total of £87m.

Managing partner Ian Austin cited strong performance in the contentious side of its business, which grew from around £30.5m last year to £34m this year.

Austin told The Lawyer: “It was a decent performance – it was probably the toughest time a lot of us have experienced in our ­professional careers. The vast majority of our lawyers are under 37 years old and have never experienced a recession before. To hold on to that level of turnover is pretty good.”

Austin predicted that profitability this year would be in line with last year’s.

At the end of the 2007-08 financial year the North West firm recorded an average profit per equity partner of £400,000 and a profit margin of 23 per cent.

Halliwells has launched four rounds of redundancies since the downturn began, with up to 75 jobs affected among fee-earners and support staff.