Flushing out bullies

Trainee solicitors report that bullying – from being expected to perform menial tasks, such as cleaning lavatories, to outright sexual harassment – is on the increase. Jon Robins reports


‘Isearched endlessly for a training contract, and when I finally got one I was so happy,’ says one 24-year-old female trainee solicitor. ‘However, since I’ve been here I’ve only done meaningless tasks, cleaning the toilets and parking cars. I can’t believe I am being made to do these things.’


The comments are taken from a verbatim transcript of one of 2,241 telephone calls that have been made to the Trainee Solicitors Group (TSG) helpline in the 12 months up to March 2005. The helpline is a confidential advisory freephone service that is manned by 17 trained volunteers, and is available to the group’s 47,000 members.


The TSG describes the statistical data provided by the service, and published this month in its helpline review, as ‘a tool for metamorphism’, as well as ‘a desperate attempt to raise the awareness of issues’ affecting those young lawyers who are struggling at the start of their career (see [2005] Gazette, 3 November, 1).

Certainly, the trainee quoted earlier sounds desperate, and feels she has nowhere to turn. ‘I do not want to be singled out, as there are not very many trainees in this firm and they will all know that I was the one to report them to the Law Society,’ she says. ‘If I complain I know that it will make things worse.’


On average there are 166 calls made every month to the helpline, and the total number of calls overall this year represented a 13% increase on the previous year. TSG chairman Peter Wright describes trainees as being treated ‘as the bottom of the food chain – little more the low-paid menial staff.’ More than two-thirds of the calls came from women, and just under one-third from trainees from ethnic minority backgrounds. More than one quarter of the record number of calls related to trainees being bullied, harassed, bribed or threatened.


Mr Wright says: ‘The fact that the proportion of these calls is going up exponentially suggests there is a growing problem. It’s one of the reasons why the Law Society’s training framework review is in existence, because the current system is far from perfect.’


Disturbingly, many of the reports of harassment were of a sexual nature. ‘Callers referred to being blackmailed into complying with sexual advances and, if they refused, they were threatened that the training contract would not be signed off,’ the TSG reports.


One transcript records the ‘dread’ of a 28-year-old man at being confronted by his supervising solicitor who had just discovered that his charge was gay. ‘I thought I would be embarrassed, but what happened next really caught me by surprise,’ the caller says. The principal took the trainee out for a drink and made an advance. ‘He tried to kiss me and when I refused... he turned nasty,’ he recalls. ‘He told me that because I was nearing qualification, he would refuse to sign off my training contract unless I became involved with him.’


Genevieve Monclin, one of the TSG helpline volunteers, says the group resists analysing the statistics to ascertain trends – for example, whether more calls come from the City or high street. ‘There are many, many different issues at play, and it is unfair to put it down to one factor,’ she says. ‘It is like having a marriage breakdown. It is never down to one thing.’


The Young Solicitors Group is formally launching its own helpline in the new year. The group’s chairman, Keith Etherington, insists that bullying within the profession is ‘in pockets, rather than being pervasive’. So where are these pockets? ‘It’s hard to know because, as always, the statistics in these reviews are anonymous,’ he replies. ‘I accept there is a significant problem, but how we tackle this without more detailed information is difficult.’ He says any statistics gathered from the helpline will be used to ‘create practical solutions’.


LawCare is the advisory and support service that helps lawyers deal with health problems such as depression and addiction. Its helpline has only kept records of bullying for the last three years, and so far it is aware of 108 cases. ‘We reckon that about 11% of our cases relate to bullying,’ estimates administrator Anna Jones. ‘It isn’t just trainees, but other younger solicitors as well. Generally, the younger they are the more likely they are to be bullied, and trainees are at the bottom of the pecking order. But we’ve had calls from senior partners who are being bullied.’


Ms Jones reports that the profile of the perpetrator is often ‘the serial bully’. She explains: ‘It’s where someone picks on the weakest in the office and bullies that person until they leave. Often it is down to insecurity in the bully.’ LawCare has not dealt with any cases of sexual blackmail, but it reckons that 88% of workplace bullying complaints come from women.


Julie Swan, the Law Society’s head of education and training, describes the reports of sexual blackmail as ‘truly shocking’. She says: ‘Obviously, it is very alarming and disappointing that they are taking place in a profession that advises clients and is governed by very strict rules of professional conduct.’ Mr Wright adds that all callers are informed that they can notify the Law Society on a ‘free, independent and confidential basis’ of any concerns that they have.


If trainees can be persuaded to contact Chancery Lane, staff will investigate, Ms Swan says. ‘We monitor some 200 training establishments every year, and we include in our schedule those about which concerns have been raised.’


In advance of a Law Society visit, questionnaires are sent out to trainees and training principles, and during the visit there will be meetings with some, if not all, of the trainees and their supervisors. As most of the firms visited by the Law Society are selected randomly, it will not be obvious that a trainee has raised concerns about the firm.


Ms Swan is eager to point out that there is often another side to this story. ‘For many trainees it will be their first experience of employment, and they will be fresh out of law school and university,’ she says. ‘We often hear trainees reporting what they regard as inappropriate conduct, but for those of us who’ve been in the world of work for a while, it is just a routine.’ She cites, by way of an example, complaints about trainees having just half an hour for lunch. Only ‘a tiny minority’ of the firms require follow-up action because supervision of the training was found lacking, she adds.


One proposal in the training framework review is to move away from the ‘time-served approach’, to one which monitors the actual skills and experience acquired during the training period more closely. ‘It is not a direct response to these concerns, but perhaps it would remove the mentality, if it exists, that trainees feel that they just have to get through the experience,’ says Ms Swan.


The TSG backs Law Society proposals for increased monitoring of the training contract. Mr Wright says: ‘We have supported the work of the training framework review group to introduce greater regulation of training contracts. [Under the current system] there is too much scope for bad practice to come in.’


He would also like to see firms’ own human resources departments take more responsibility for trainees, and provide them with a means of asking for help. ‘If firms were doing that now, we would not be getting all these calls,’ he says.


In the meantime, trainees will continue to turn to the TSG helpline. Like many others, the young woman caller quoted earlier feels it is the only place she can go. She says: ‘If I complain, I know that it will make things worse. But I just feel like I am learning nothing and I have been doing this for nearly a year.’


Jon Robins is a freelance journalist