I applied for a position as a candidate attorney at a law firm a few years ago. Initially my application was rejected, however I got a call the next next week asking me to come in on the next day (they phoned me on a Sunday). I got there and met with who would have been my boss (let's call him John). John's uncle is one of the directors of the firm (John got the job because of nepotism).
I met with the person who I would replace and she started showing me the ropes (let's call her Anna). After a few hours Anna said something along the lines of the following to me: “Listen, I cannot let you work here in good conscience. You need to leave right now and never look back. This place has held me captive for almost 5 years.”
Accordingly to the laws of my country, you have to work at a law firm for 2 years and write the bar exams before you can become an attorney. In that time, attorneys basically just offload all of the worst tasks to you and pay you next to nothing, while taking all of the credit (Yes, I know that is just capitalism in a nutshell). They also treat you like trash at a lot of the firms. So they kept Anna there for 5 years and they refused to sign off on her articles, because they knew she would leave when she finally was admitted as an attorney by the Court. So she worked an extra 3 years and they refused to acknowledge that she possessed the necessary experience, skill and expertise that she had already accumulated 2 years in. She also couldn't leave because then she essentially would have wasted all of her time and would have to start over somewhere else where the same thing could easily happen to her. She was also quite poor, had no safety net and had to rely on the shitty salary to make ends meet (calling the salary “peanuts” is being generous). So she stuck it out and they finally signed off when she instituted a lawsuit against them. She obviously resigned just days after her admission was processed, hence them looking for new candidates (fresh meat).
To nobody's surprise, she also told me that the staff turnover in general at that firm is through the roof. In addition to being sexist, the directors were apparently all extremely homophobic (Anna is gay) and Anna had to deal with horrible homophobic remarks and other abuse/sexual harassment for 5 years, which she could do nothing about for fear of putting her career at risk. Furthermore, the staff were expected to work 12 hour shifts (oftentimes a lot more) every single day and come in on some weekends as well with no overtime pay. Pure insanity. Sometimes the staff would just sleep on the premises.
Turns out they hired me because all of the people who they hired, left after the first day (5 candidates). I was happy to follow suit. It is also worth noting that they hired basically only women and then sexually harass them (I heard this from at least 4 of the women who worked there). It's a violent cycle:
Hire women -> Sexually harass them -> They leave -> Repeat
I regularly look up the firm's reviews on Glassdoor and the words “abuse” and “crazy hours” can be found all over those reviews. Sadly, yet understandably, Anna no longer practices law, but she is doing very well both mentally and from a career perspective.