“Exercising as a young employee is very difficult. It requires a substantial commitment, with an enormous workload, and remains very precarious. You can be dismissed without reason and without the right to compensation”he testified to AFP.
The “only protection” dismissed employees consists of three to six months’ notice, depending on the case, specifies this 31-year-old man, who has become a corporate lawyer in a bank.
Graduated in 2019, the young lawyer carried out his first collaboration in a “large international law firm”, whose name he wishes to conceal. However, he resigned quickly, due to a “very heavy workload and a special atmosphere, with several cases of burnout within the team”. “The environment was suffocating, unhealthy,” he explains.
The environment is very competitive “between trainees, between employees, and between these two levels”he confides, which prevented him from creating bonds of trust.
He himself admits: “When I was an associate, I was afraid that an intern would perform better than me. In this kind of firm, there are ten interns for, at best, an offer of collaboration.”
“It was a kind of contest, to who would stay the latest”he still regrets, referring to a friend made redundant following a sick leave: “He was not committed enough, left early, at 8 p.m.”Arthur heard in the corridors.
“After his two-week hiatus, he never again got the slightest collaboration offer behind”he cursed. “Our health is nothing. We always have to think about what people will say about it”.
“Spit in the Soup”
If Arthur did not consult a doctor during this period, he says he felt “professional burnout”.
“Full commitment is expected, with very little social life, especially the first year. I worked 9am to 11pm including weekends”remembers the one to whom “several holiday periods” were refused.
“The partners have no managerial skills”he accuses. “It’s a very nice profession, but we young lawyers are faced with grotesque situations. The worst thing is that it seems normal to us when we’re in it, we tell ourselves that to denounce is to spit in the soup”. He himself had not declared these abuses to the Council of the Order or to the President of the Bar, which governs the profession.
If the Council of the Order has set up bodies to free the voice of the victims, Arthur questions its skills.
He sees it as “an organization that defends above all large firms that achieve a large turnover, or partners established for thirty or forty years”. “The lawyers’ community is an intertwined community and everyone knows each other. We have a sword of Damocles hanging over our heads”he insists.
For him, “young lawyers are afraid of repercussions. It was not necessary to speak but to suffer”.
Corridor noises exist, however, but internally, between young graduates. “My classmates always participate in Facebook or WhatsApp groups allowing them to draw up blacklists, to report firms to avoid”.
Finally, Arthur is relieved to have returned his dress. But keep an eye on developments in the profession and the Instagram account “Balance your law firm”, listing anonymous testimonies from other victims.
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