As the twitching corpse of Dewey & LeBoeuf dangles on its rope, London trainees have been offered a lifeline by their former London Managing Partner.

Peter Sharp fled to Morgan Lewis just two weeks ago. And although that firm has not previously offered training contracts, Sharp has now asked Dewey trainees looking for a new job to send him their CVs, in an email leaked to RollOnFriday.

Sharp writes that his new firm is "determined to do what we can to try to help you in the present situation, subject to...overall constraints". However, not all can be accommodated in an office half the size of Deweys', and so it's dog-eat-dog amongst those who've not already been whisked away by departing partners. And that's aside from those still at law school.

While it may be hard to see what more Sharp could have done, other than going down with the Dewey ship, trainees at the firm say that they are furious at a complete lack of communication over the last month about their future (or lack thereof) with the firm.

What Dewey's trainees wanted and what they feel they got

Over in the US, one Dewey partner has blamed journalists for the downfall of the once-mighty institution. In a lengthy video rant, Stuart Saft, once head of the firm's real estate team, blamed recruiters egged on by legal newshounds. He claims they together destabilised the firm by creating a "media sensation", provoking the snowballing defections. But his best line is that "you really cannot blame anybody for anything that happened". What, not the management team which granted guaranteed packages to 100 of the 190 equity partners?