Experiences as a trainee solicitor

[MrsABC123]

Name changed for this post as it might be fairly revealing. Not sure why I am posting this now but I have been mulling over some past experiences and wanted to know whether people think I am overreacting or not. At the time I brushed this stuff off but now I'm not sure. This all happened about 7 - 10 years ago.

For context, I was a trainee at a very well regarded silver circle firm in London. Completed my training contract and was offered a role in the department of my choice where I stayed until 3 years PQ at which point I changed careers completely having become totally disillusioned with the hours I was working (routinely - and I really do mean routinely - leaving after midnight) and no support from partners.

Anyway, the three experiences below definitely added to the stress and anxiety I experienced and I wonder what you make of them:

1. My first supervisor (male, 38, married, 3 kids): would allude to the fact he and his wife no longer had sex, told me that if the end of the world was coming he'd take me into the prayer room and shag me, other things like that. Full disclosure: I definitely had a crush on him but now reframing it, I wonder if it's all a bit gross considering I was only 23...

1. Second supervisor: made it clear he didn't like me from the word go (not sure why, I probably was a bit hopeless), would shout at me or ignore me, told me in my mid-seat review that he couldn't think of one positive thing about me so he had written that I "made a nice cup of tea." I was later told that he had a "problem" with "nice looking young women" by a senior associate who had the same experience with him as a trainee.

1. Post qualification I sat with the 60 year old male head of department from about 2 years PQ who would hide parts of my lunch in his desk drawer that he deemed to be "unhealthy" (stuff like popcorn mainly) and refuse to give it back. He'd also complain that I didn't get in until 9.30am when he was at his desk at 8 (he left at 5 on the dot, I left at 10 earliest).

What does everyone think about this? In retrospect I find it all rather unpleasant and am angry that my experience in law (which I worked bloody hard for and at) was ended by a combination of toxic work environment and unbelievably long hours.

AIBU or not? Anyone else have similar experiences?

Didn’t happen to me - Magic Circle 1990s - but I heard a lot of stories. DD1 wants to apply.

Don't think it's all law firms but not a unique experience for sure. If it was 10 years ago though, why dwell on it? You've moved on thankfully.

@africa2go good question. I think because I feel like there was something wrong with me that I couldn't tough it out/ignore it. Probably ruminating on it because of all the extra thinking in lockdown.

That's why I'm asking whether it's normal/OK. Wondered if maybe I was just being a bit pathetic tbh.

Agree @minipie. Think it was a combination of bad departments (the one I qualified into was toxic and actually the target of a fairly high profile discrimination case at the time) and I think I was just unlucky the other ones.

@MsTSwift sorry to hear that. It completely sucks.

Yes, I have similar experiences.
Trainees, young female solicitors and PA’s were treated very badly. There was a lot of arrogant male privilege on display.
No one complained because they worried about not getting a job or of being made redundant. We worked huge hours and sick days were frowned upon so seldom taken.

You said I didn't get in until 9.30am so it sounded like you were being late. Every place I've worked in no one has had a start time after 9 but there was a culture of some people coming in between 9 and 9:30 where it was allowed and that was generally frowned upon less than people leaving early or exactly on time.

I trained at a silver circle firm a decade ago (still there) and nothing as bad as your experiences happened, though it doesn’t surprise me and I know friends at other firms had similar. It certainly wouldn’t be acceptable where I work. It was very noticeable when we had a partner join recently from another firm and he was a total bully - abusive to trainees and PAs particularly. Lots of people complained and he was managed out quickly, but he’d clearly behaved like that his entire career without consequences.

This sounds very similar to my experience at a big 4 accountancy firm in the 90s. I also switched career as a result. They were awful to female trainees. Toxic place to work. A trainer who started the year after me was crying to me in her second week asking if this was just what work was like. Following a week when we were away working at a client and sexually harassed daily. Even the clients commented on it to us.

Doesn't sound at all unusual. Law firms are fairly brutal I think.

I also had a very similar experience, including the groping.

My mental health has improved no ends since I changed careers a couple of years ago.

I am a lawyer at a big firm, based in London, and I don’t recognise this type of experience at all. Been there 12 odd years. Never had anyone bully, harass or shout at me, and I can only remember one time where someone got visibly stressed/angry with me (even though at times I have done stupid things wrong). The hours are sometimes long but the partners do care and try to do something about it where possible, and have come up with creative working arrangements for those who desire them, such as parents who want to reduce hours. So like a pp I would say not all law firms are like this. Sorry you had such an awful experience. I’m not surprised you jumped ship!

I'm a law graduate and I did not want to work for one of the big law firms because work-life balance was very low down their list of priorities. I decided there was more to life and did not to go to law school. Having a law degree has always impressed employers! I now work in a related field where my degree is useful and a big chunk of the work is legal. Yes my earnings are less than my contemporaries who pursued law, but I earn a good salary, enjoy the challenges of my job and have evenings and weekends to myself.

Unfortunately totally normal. When I was working for experience whilst doing my degree, it once inferred to me that should I struggle to pay for my LPC, I could “sell my company” and that the person in question would gladly pay for my services. This was after many months being told how great my legs looked and being praises for wearing tights and skirts. Disappointment was expressed if I wore trousers. I was offered a training contract there.

I joined a firm for my TC and soon found that the partner who employed me had a thing for women of my “type” and I’d essentially got the job because of my hair colour and generous bra cup size. Partner would pat me on the head regularly and approach me from behind and squeeze my shoulders.

Job post qualification I’m confident I got for the same reasons and spent many client “meetings” discussing clients preferences on women over drinks.

So depressing!

That’s awful behaviour.. but to be honest not something that I would say was par for the course in law firms. I trained in a silver circle firm about 10 years ago and don’t remember feeling treated with anything other than respect. I then moved to another city firm.. left eventually due to the bitchy backstabbing office politics but certainly nothing like you experienced took place. Perhaps I am just lucky.

I was asked if I was planning to have a family and my boss

Ahh yes. I’ve been asked this in more than one interview.

That sounds awful. I would honestly be horrified. I trained with the civil service though. The hours were really good, most colleagues were nice and trainees were exposed to really exciting opportunities like attending Parliament and working on cases before the Supreme Court. I even managed to get a trip to Brussels as a 1st year trainee to advise at the European Commission which is crazy looking back. If you’re still in law or even if you’ve had a career break it could be with considering the GLS if a healthy work culture is your priority. Some Departments are better to work for than others but even then the behaviour is nowhere near how you’ve described in your post. I’m sorry you had to experience that.

Not surprised. I think the issue is that at most firms the nice / normal people leave and the ones who can hack it are ultimately corrupted (or were bad eggs to begin with).

Been in City law for 10 years+ and sounds normal to me too. I think the SRA did try to help with the Beckwith case but they picked the wrong complainant really and someone seems to have done a bad job of arguing the case before the SDT. Looking forward to law having its #metoo moment.

I have been reading the book, Confessions of a Barrister. I didnt know how much of it to take with a pinch of salt, but reading this thread, seems like it is more of an honest account than I was giving it credit for.

I can totally relate. Trained in the city at a big firm over 10 years ago and experienced horrible bullying behaviour. Still wake up in a cold sweat about it after a bad dream every so often. Most of my fellow female trainee cohort were treated badly over their careers there, particularly if they tried to work through pregnancy and come back from maternity leave. Horrific.

Sounds normal for city firms. I trained him n the magic circle and it took me a long time after leaving to readjust expectations to something approximating normal.

I should say I now work for a regional firm where things are far far better.

Is this type of treatment common in large law firms? Yes (I've been a lawyer nearly 29 years).

Is it acceptable? No.

Hopefully as such behaviour becomes less acceptable in society in general, we will an improvement in larger firms - if only because other partners use the bad behaviour of their contemporaries as leverage for internal political purposes.

It's disappointing and part of the reason I left BigLaw a few years ago.

Sorry you went through that OP. It reflects on the perpetrators and not on you.

I can relate, OP. Not to the sexual harassment stuff as I am not very attractive, but I trained at an MC firm about 10 years ago and I only managed 5 years PQE before I left under a cloud of rage and despair.

The working hours I could cope with, but it was the total dedication of most of the partners to never acknowledging your effort or giving you any praise that I couldn’t cope with. You would get one review a year which they made it quite clear they had no interest in doing for you, and you had to practically drag them to it. Then they would either give you generic advice about what one should do to succeed in one’s career (basically do exactly what they did) or criticising you for any minute thing they could recall in the 4 minutes of time they have devoted to noticing you in the past 12 months. I worked on huge cases which were so challenging and I thought I was a pretty good lawyer but all they had to say was “oh remember when you did X wrong” or “you should take more notes” or some other utter rubbish. It was so disheartening. It was like they were determined never to say anything nice! I was so desperate for mentorship and and a bit of encouragement.

The worst partners were those who openly played favourites, you would see them only ever speak to the same 2 or 3 people who they had decided were good lawyers, the rest of the associates didn’t get a look in. It created a culture of everyone feeling quite entitled to call other lawyers “shit” quite openly, “oh she’s shit, that trainee is shit, he’s shit”. I found it shocking to be honest.

Just a total determination not to see you as an individual or give you any praise in case you got too big for your boots or something. But it’s soul destroying when you know how hard you worked on a case, the fires you put out, the weekends/birthdays/anniversaries/valentines days you missed, and all it boils down to is “yeah you’re doing ok, do better, be more proactive etc”. That was a favourite!

Basically it was a popularity contest as to who could eat the most shit from the partners and get them to like you which I could obviously never figure out.

The whole thing is so, so backward. My friends in other industries have totally different experiences of feedback etc. Things are so different now but a lot of law firms still operate under the old rules (partners give their opinions with impunity and what they say goes, even if it’s based on nothing but their own personal prejudice). They are so far behind modern practices in that respect although they pay lip service to the “360 feedback” and “continuous development” culture. The ones I met didn’t give a shit about developing young lawyers.

Time to call my therapist...