With Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer's financial results today confirmed, some judgments can be made about how the UK's big four law firms have fared over the recession and the subsequent slump in commercial activity – a period roughly spanning 2008-09 and 2009-10. Unsurprisingly, the worst recession for at least 25 years had taken a considerable toll.

In 2008, the group collectively billed £4.816bn, a figure that has now fallen to £4.567bn, meaning £249m has disappeared from the top line, including £132m at Clifford Chance (CC). All four firms have been through major partnership restructurings in the last four years and CC, Linkaters and Allen & Overy (A&O) in addition last year pushed through large-scale redundancies for junior lawyers and support staff.

The effect of such drastic cost-cutting can be seen this year, with CC and A&O both managing substantive hikes in profits per equity partner (PEP) despite falls in turnover.

But as is often the case with law firms, sharp swings in performance in individual years are smoothed out over a longer timeline, somewhat obscuring the underlying performance of the group during the recession.

Last year was a simple narrative: Freshfields won by a mile, Linklaters and A&O ground out a respectable relative results and CC pushed the envelope of what a top-tier law firm could endure and still be considered a top-tier law firm. The 2009-10 season has softened those sharp edges with CC benefiting from a strong post-summer run after finally resolving its long-running restructuring and doing enough to silence the growing questions about its membership of the club – for now at least.

Freshfields, likewise, has taken enough of a hit on turnover this year to tone down the triumphalism that was quietly evident among its partnership in 2009 – though not by much, the firm is feeling very bullish about it market position against its peers. That is largely because Freshfields has delivered such a strong showing on profitability in recent years, where it is sustaining a lead on its rivals, with PEP currently standing at £1.41m.

But even if the relative performance of the big four is less dramatic than a year in isolation would suggest, on a three-year view you would have to say that Freshfields and A&O have had a substantially better crisis than their two peers. Through the recession Freshfields has seen only a marginal fall in revenues and profits, while A&O is the only big four firm to boost its top line over the last two years, to the tune of £34m, while also sustaining profits near 2008 levels.

The two firms went down diametrically opposed routes, with Freshfields avoiding a recession-related restructuring during the downturn and A&O going for a short, very sharp shock – but the clarity of approach appears to have worked.

Given its huge exposure to the banking sector and a smaller international practice than its peers, A&O has played its hand extremely well. Freshfields has, likewise, looked assured and coherent through the last two years – in management and at practice level.

Linklaters, having bucked the general trend by expanding its equity partnership ranks through this period, will feel it has had a solid run, but there is a sense that a practice of this calibre is capable of that little bit more than we've seen. Having gone through more than its fair share of upheaval over the last 10 years (the Angel restructuring, Cologne, New World), the firm will want to see partner profits, which currently stand at £1.21m, ultimately getting closer to its arch-rival Freshfields.

(Some would argue the gap is actually wider, since a strict reading of PEP not excluding partners on an country 'discount' lowers the firm's PEP marginally, to £1.14m in 2009-10 by my calculations.)

Still, the bottom line is that the recession has entirely failed to weaken the position of the magic circle. Given that the group has proved able to sustain highly profitable businesses with their core transactional markets in a sustained paralysis, short of an Andersen-style firm-busting negligence claim I'm not sure what could dislodge them.