Nightmare of a trainee solicitorTo realise an ambition of becoming a solicitor, I relinquished 25 years of international senior management and gained an honours degree by distance learning, without once speaking to any lecturer or attending any seminar.Unpaid work experience at a practice culminated in being contracted as a trainee solicitor in 1998.A seven-day working week realised income exceeding any funding needed for the entire training contract.

Without my consent or satisfaction of Law Society criteria, I was unceremoniously discarded 17 months later, without one word of regret from the training principal, that title itself being a misnomer.

Insult to injury was compounded as the TC8 [to take into account work done before the training contract] has not been forwarded to the Law Society, despite repeated requests.

That is now academic, as was the Society's failure to reply to my communications, irrespective of acknowledgments that the contents were receiving attention.I was welcomed into another practice eventually to further my traineeship, but a partner who was not involved in my appointment soon dispassionately stated that no time was available to train me.

So once again, I was unceremoniously dumped.

Working identical hours and purchasing expensive text books was manifestly immaterial and no expression of apology or explanation, or even contact with the partner who had employed me, was forthcoming; this from a man who had voiced my high-flying potential only days before.Good old-fashioned hard work on my part satisfied previous honourable employers.

Are law firms generally lacking in such qualities and therefore not worthy of absolute trust, unquestionable loyalty or total commitment?Spending thousands of pounds to get the degree and LPC and my five-year endeavour appear to have been an utter waste, as I am now unemployed.At 52, I may even be unemployable, if recent unanswered telephone calls to another solicitor are a guide, all because of following my perception, as an honourable person, that the legal profession itself was honourable, and therefore worthy of my joining.

How wrong I was, or has it been a case of my simple misfortune?Colin Storey, Thornton Cleveleys, Lancashire