Suddenly, he became frosty and started to suggest my prospects with his firm were not good. He even said I should find another firm." Later, the partner asked Ms Breeze on another date "By this time, I had got the message. Mary Breeze (not her real name), 24, from south London, was at first impressed by the informal relationships between the younger female trainees and partners at the central London law firm where she worked as a paralegal. "It just seemed like a fun place to work - we played hard and worked hard. But the closer I got to being taken on as a trainee the more interest some of the partners started to take in me "Then one of the partners asked me out on a date I turned him down. In a guide published last month, trainees and newly qualified solicitors were asked to rank their firm in a series of different categories and pick out their best and worst moments of their working lives. Often in their first jobs, they complained of being verbally abused by partners, criticised by impatient judges and being made to work 100 hours a week without adequate breaks.

The guide, which warns graduates of the harsh working environments in the City, also helps identity firms which suffer from the worst macho cultures. In smaller firms, trainees can be treated as the bottom of the food chain - little more than low-paid menial staff on the same level as office assistants." Last year, UK law firms took on more than 5,600 trainees, paying them on average £26,000 per year. Mr Wright told the Law Society Gazette: "This is not just a few cases - it is dozens and hundreds, and it is a telling statistic that two-thirds of calls were from women. Calls to the helpline increased by 13 per cent on the previous year - with more than two-thirds of the calls coming from women, and just under a third from trainees from ethnic minorities. The court heard that blood matching the dead man's DNA was found in a screw recess on Private Samuel May's rifle.

The cleared soldiers are Corporal Scott Evans, 32, Private Billy Nerney, 24, Samuel May, 25, Morne Vosloo, 26, Daniel Harding, 25, Roberto Di-Gregorio, 24, and Scott Jackson, 26. Before directing the panel to clear the soldiers, Judge Blackett said he considered the investigation into the case had been "inadequate". He said: "It has been established during the course of the case that the investigators made serious omissions in not searching for records of hospital admissions or treatment and not establishing whether there was a register at Al Najaf shrine in which Nadhem's burial may have been recorded." Judge Blackett also criticised investigators for not taking DNA swabs from Nadhem's siblings to exclude them as a possible source of the blood on Private May's rifle and for not analysing the DNA swabs taken from the defendants. He also said it had been a "significant error" to have waited six months before interviewing the defendants under caution or taking fuller statements from the Iraqi witnesses. Judge Blackett said that the Iraqi witnesses had admitted using the case to obtain money from the British Army. "They frequently spoke of 'fasil' or blood money and compensation to what were patently exaggerated claims," he said. However, Judge Blackett said he had no criticism to make of the prosecution or the Army prosecuting authority.