An investigation into the working conditions of legal counsel at major companies found a troubling increase in the rate of bullying that could be compared to domestic abuse.

A new study by The Eagle Club, a network of senior female lawyers and C-suite execs, and the law firm Mishcon de Reya, found a pattern of bullying taking place among general counsel staff at high-profile companies, leading to huge levels of anxiety and depression.

Some employees identified overt hostility from their bosses in the form of shouting, throwing items, or sending aggressive emails and WhatsApp messages.

The most common, however, was the use of “subtle sabotage,” essentially microaggressions that made employees feel undermined and created an environment that was similar to domestic abuse.

“The slipperiest form of bullying is the most subtle and wide-ranging,” the authors wrote.

Subtle sabotage can take many forms and manifests itself in different ways among the employees who formed the Eagle Club’s research.

Micromanagement is a key pillar of this form of coercion, with bosses erratically calling their employees to check in and ensure they always feel like they’re being watched.

Isolation was another major trait of subtle sabotage, with employees citing how they had been left out of “boys club” WhatsApp groups or were kept out of specific email chains.

A prevalent aspect of this pattern of behavior involved gaslighting, with employers playing down their actions to their employees to convince them it wasn’t problematic.

“These slippery behaviors that result in targets feeling gaslit have overlap with behaviors that are now in domestic relationships being defined as coercive control,” the authors wrote.

“Whether domestic or professional, this destabilizes the target and can delay or preclude them from seeking help,” the authors wrote. “In many of our interviews, where people were still not sure whether to call behaviors bullying or not, this is the pervasive effects of gaslighting still affecting them.”

A boss holding the threat of dismissal over an employee unless they obey their commands, engaging in lying and deceit to other co-workers, and setting an employee up to fail by calling them out in meetings, are other forms of “subtle sabotage” identified by researchers as damaging experiences experienced by in-house legal counsel.

The research, which focuses on legal workers, showed workers in the profession were more likely to bear the brunt of this type of bullying because they would often provide advice that was contrary to the goals of the company.

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