Abstract

Despite the fact that corporate law firms attract some of the most intelligent and productive minds in business today, they have failed to cultivate a workplace that facilitates healthy and balanced lives for their practitioners. Workplace stress in the sector is manifest in a culture which continues to sanction 'rite of passage' work practices which bolster earnings for those at the apex but are proving sickening to many. This culture inhibits basic ethical human interaction based on decency and respect and cultivates oppression through fear of failure. Not surprisingly then, bullying is tolerated and lawyer attrition is rife, particularly for junior women lawyers. This article considers the impact of bullying in Australian corporate law firms. Foucauldian thought is utilised in order to better understand first, how the organisational culture in major law firms continues to authorise practices which prove injurious to practitioners' health and secondly, the resulting lawyer attrition. It is argued that the 'disciplinary technologies' being adopted by management function to assure an economy of power relations which not only facilitates conformity with the values and imperatives of the firm but also, the quelling of subversion and resistance to its effects. Standpoint theory is adopted to examine the workplace harms being borne by junior lawyers through a narrative 'Snapshot' of the experience of a female, mature-aged, junior lawyer working as a solicitor at a top tier Australian corporate law firm. Her detailed account illuminates recent quantitative empirical research into the experiences of Australian women lawyers and lays bare the culture of fear and workings of power, violence and marginalisation within the firm