In her first year as a rookie lawyer, Anna worked in a small firm where the managing director would frequently call employees individually into his office and "yell at the top of his voice". Each time it happened, other employees outside his room would be left rattled, wondering who would be called up next. Anna, who is now in her 40s and works in a different law firm, said: "Even if he didn't yell, he would raise his voice and say very mean things like, 'How come you don't even know this? Do you even check your work?'" Like several other lawyers and former lawyers who spoke to CNA TODAY, Anna declined to have her real name published because she did not want to be seen speaking ill of law firms that she still has to work with or of past employers.
What she experienced seems fairly commonplace in law firms, with many other lawyers reporting having faced similar issues, though to varying degrees, including being shouted at, having items thrown at them and dealing with unreasonable demands on their time.A recently published study commissioned by the Law Society of Singapore (LawSoc) to look into attrition rate of lawyers found that toxic work culture, bullying and workload pressures, as well as the judicial system, were among the factors contributing to lawyers leaving practice for other industries or in-house work.The multi-year study surveyed 855 current and former legal practitioners and did in-depth interviews with 31 of them.CNA TODAY spoke to more than a dozen lawyers across different stages of their careers, with about half of them having left private practice entirely or having left practice for prolonged periods to take a break.A few of these lawyers provided more positive experiences about working in a law firm, but even they acknowledged that toxic behaviour in law firms was not uncommon and had heard of friends being on the receiving end.As for Anna, things got so bad that she found herself crying every day. She eventually sought help from a psychiatrist and was given medication for anxiety and two weeks' medical leave.Her medical certificate cut no ice with her boss and she was forced to continue working during that period.Leaving that firm after about a year, she recalled speaking to an ex-colleague about how bad their workplace culture was and how they should not let their bosses treat them like that anymore."She just replied with this: 'This boss is very good already, because he never throws files and staplers at us. I heard in other firms, they throw files and staplers'."
