We're in the depths of what is commonly dubbed the silly season – that time of the year when the trains are half-empty and newspapers splash on 'killer shark' sightings off the coast of Cornwall.

In fact, the last couple of weeks have produced their fair share of interesting legal stories.

We've had the acrimonious fallout from Taylor Wessing and Nixon Peabody's failed merger talks; we've seen the collapse of merger negotiations between Baker & McKenzie and Heller Ehrman; and we've witnessed the scandal resulting from an associate's visit to a Soho strip club with a summer vacation scheme student in tow.

A trawl through Legal Week's archives suggests that there is nothing unusual about this year; although there does seem to be a pattern to the kind of stories that break during the holiday season.

First, at the start of August, you get a flurry of announcements as law firms, regulatory bodies and the like rush to clear the decks before everybody disappears off on holiday.

Then, once everybody is at the beach, you get a smattering of genuinely important bad news stories that just happen to be announced when nobody is looking.

Third, during tougher times, a bad July followed by the prospect of a dreadful August can concentrate minds when it comes to staffing costs, especially as August is such a good month to announce redundancies in.

Finally, there is that brand of story that breaks precisely because those people who are still around have been overtaken by apathy. Many a set of merger talks have foundered during the dead days of August.

Any management consultant worth his or her salt will tell you that if you can't tie up your merger negotiations before August, you may as well give up there and then.

So there you have it, Legal Week's guide to silly season news stories.

From the archive, here's Legal Week 'sizzling six' headlines…

Lovells to axe Berlin arm - 30 August 2006