Pluspunten
My familiarity is largely with the Northeast Region. I am told that the other regions operate differently. • We are one of the best-paid legal staff out of something like 300 firms in the Northeast. • There is as much opportunity as you make for yourself in this firm, depending on the office. • There are plenty of opportunities for manufactured socializing, the firm has monthly lunches provided to offices and encourages chatting during that time. • Updated technology at all offices with a devoted IT team. • Generous firm as far as holiday bonuses. Support staff receives $100 at Administrative Professionals’ Day, Thanksgiving, and NYE. Christmas bonus has never been less than $1,500 for me. • Depending on team/office, pretty easy to find coverage for PTO and WFH days. I have not heard of anybody being denied PTO, regardless of turnaround, unless they’d already had a “talking-to” about their schedules. • Northeast manager is pretty laid-back and doesn’t often travel so there is no breathing down our neck from management as often as other departments/regions. • Approachable managing partner (from my distance). Ben Mathis is a good guy with a business dream that has become larger than himself. He does not often visit places he isn’t opening a new office, but he is reachable by a team that manages his email correspondence.
Minpunten
I do enjoy my particular office because I am the kind of individual that can look past a lot of nonsense. • The salary is attractive, but know that if you start here you will need to stay here unless you want a pay cut or continue to move up in Big Law. This is NOT Big Law. I wouldn’t go as far as to say it’s adjacent, though they’ve acquired many legacy firms. • Unfortunately, if you are a support staff member, it is extremely difficult to get your name out there for promotion to an Administrative Management position, unless you have an office chair that makes it their business to help you out. Office chairs are entirely useless if they don’t agree to your cause, or feel you are too useful to them to be promoted. • Partners go unchecked for their bad behavior because of lack of upper management involvement, though I don’t think things are much better behaviorally within upper management. Complaints have gone unnoticed and people have quit before hearing anything about resolution to issues. Many partners are notorious for being problematic, abusive to admins, and stealing time by fluffing their billing. • Associates are essentially left to their own devices due to lack of mentorship, which creates tension between them and staff members who don’t have answers for them (especially if the staff member reports to partners in the office). • The firm is national, which has caused issues with streamlining the legal softwares they’ve attempted to implement. What works in Atlanta might not work in SoCal, Texas, or Florida. Be prepared to have to cobble together your understanding of the softwares, because the training has been subpar, and there have been forceful emails sent about lack of usage. • Decisions are made from top down with absolutely no regard for the process of implementation or location. The new legal software issue comes to mind, but this is across the board. Quotas, office budgets, and operations are all negotiated out of ATL, which does not work on the national stage (much less when you have offices in major cities across the nation). • The AP/AR departments are severely understaffed and suffer from high turnover, making it essentially impossible to get things paid quickly with no snags. “Rush” check requests that are needed same-day are often unfulfilled. They are also always irate because of being overworked consistently, so I often give them grace. • EVERYONE IS WHITE! I am not ignorant to the very low percentage of these groups making it as far as partner, but there are currently 0 black or Hispanic partners out of over 400 - let alone Indigenous. Myself and my coworkers are three of perhaps seven Northeast staff members that aren’t white. There is absolutely no push for diversity and many people at the firm are ignorant to race relations, let alone LGBTQ+ matters, or even women equality. There is tension regarding certain political occurrences as well. This isn’t for lack of geographical advantage, as this firm has 30-plus offices. • The rapid pace of growth is scary. The business is still being run as a mid-sized firm and this may cause an eventual crash.