There might be signs of a more robust (or at least a more stabilised) legal market, but let's not forget the thousands of jobless law grads and laid-off lawyers still out on the streets. A couple of months ago on this blog, I asked an obvious question – now that times are better, why won't firms rehire some of those who were laid off during the economic downturn?

I've heard from a few partners and headhunters who told me – off the record, of course – that those laid-off were not top drawer to begin with. The really good lawyers, they contend, were all kept on.

I found that explanation unsatisfying, disingenuous, and heartless on many levels – but especially so when referring to junior lawyers or those in practice areas that were basically decimated.

I was reminded of the plight of those unlucky lawyers recently by Corporette founder Kat Griffin, who tells me that laid-off lawyers are still cornering her for advice about their job hunts, and that she personally knows three lawyers who've been unemployed for a year or more. Griffin offers some advice on how to make it through the protracted job search in her article "When the Job Hunt Drags On…".

It's bad enough to be laid off, but as one of Griffin's readers pointed out, these lawyers face another potential stigma: being branded as untouchable for taking on certain contract positions, such as document reviewer. So is it better to just leave off lowbrow legal work on your resume, if your goal is to return to a big firm?

Several of Corporette's readers advise against putting document review work on resumes, calling it a "scarlet letter". Writes one reader: "If you took a bar job to make ends meet while job hunting, you wouldn't put that on your resume, would you? Approach temping the same way."

I asked legal recruiter Katherine Frink-Hamlett about the dilemma, and this is her take: "To the extent that omissions are tantamount to misrepresentations, I would counsel against it. Further, if omitting the projects would cause a huge and glaring gap in the resume, that's equally problematic."

But she also says that, "if the the project is relatively short (less than a month or so), then it's a coin toss."

It seems ironic that people should be penalised for working – especially when they're probably facing a mountain of law school debt. But as Griffin points out, the matter might already be moot for those shut out of big firms. "If and when the floodgates open, and top law firms start hiring again, I suspect they'll start – and stop – with the old system of recruiting second-year law students – and anyone out of the system will be shut out entirely."

The Careerist is a blog by the American Lawyer Media Group.