Avoid at all costs - werkgeversreview Assistant Paralegal bij Fragomen

Fragomen will set you up for failure on your first day of the job. The training is as much of a joke as this firm is. Salary is insulting and below industry standards, especially since Assistant Paralegals/paralegals do pretty much everything. Because of that, be prepared to always be blamed for things that may go wrong in your caseload, even though your work is checked numerous times. The attorneys seem to forget that it is their signature on the documents, not the paralegals. Completely unrealistic expectations for APs/paralegals from completion of cases to billing. Everything is of upmost importance at all times. You will spend the majority of your time at Fragomen scrambling to complete cases because you are made to believe that everything is an emergency- it isn’t. This type of expectation leads to many stressful employees. I can’t even remember how many co-workers I saw have breakdowns because of these circumstances. You are expected to produce immaculate cases, and even if you do 99.9% of the time- you will be made to feel like garbage for that .01% you messed up (which they will always ALWAYS bring up as an example of how much you suck). Because as a human being, you cannot be anything less than perfect at this company. You will also be made to feel stupid, like an annoyance and like a pebble in your supervisor’s shoe, should you have a question. Apparently, if you are hired by Fragomen as a lowly employee, you should be coming in with full knowledge of immigration law. Your team supervisor/attorney will spend the majority of their time gossiping behind closed doors and because of their unavailability, you as a paralegal will be giving legal advice to clients (something you are NOT supposed to do). Of course, issues you may have with individual cases go unanswered for days, weeks, months along with case reviews; which fosters the notion that everything is an emergency because your supervisor let something sit for months on end. But again, if you did your due diligence to remind and follow up- you are to blame for the delay. You will work your butt off to receive a 2% raise (or none at all) and then be expected to work harder for pennies. Get it through your heads that no one cares about free bagels, cake, pizza or champagne toasts. Take the budget you have for this nonsense and give people decent raises, we do the billing remember (expectation of $30-50k per month), we know how much the company makes. I truly wonder how Fragomen has managed to stay afloat for so long. Fragomen does not care about employee retention, turn-over rate is astounding and employee moral is despicably low. Don’t be deceived, there is no work life balance. People would stay if this firm showed them some appreciation or invested in career development. You will show initiative, work overtime, give 100% but upper management could care less- all they want is their bonuses. There are no incentives for working here. It would benefit Fragomen to provide some education to their upper management on the core principles of management practices since they are clueless. Absolutely deplorable and useless HR department. If you have issues with your supervisor/attorney (you most definitely will), nothing you tell HR will be kept in confidence. Whatever you tell HR will be relayed to your team manager/attorney, and of course you will be disciplined, gossiped about, and bullied. So many things have been swept under the rug that I am surprised the Department of Labor has not investigated Fragomen.