AccessLex Institute reviews

Where to begin? I'll keep it short, since the previous reviewer said most of what I'd say too. Senior management is a collection of aggressive personalities, with little to no true managerial skills, mostly focused on saving their own skin. Middle management is crushed under conflicting expectations and minimal support. It's a "butts in the seats" kind of place. So as great as they say their benefits are, don't expect work/life balance to be one of them. Although, the same rules don't apply to senior management. Expect to be watched in every way: email monitoring, log-in activity, tracking where in the office you are, when you come and go for lunch. But the worker bees are some really hard working and good people, so at least you're not in it alone. Spending all that money to rebrand from Access Group didn't change anything within the company. All around crappy environment due to truly bad, sometimes just mean, management. The turnover rate speaks for itself.

Millennials (and everyone else) beware!!! This company is not nearly as wonderful as they make themselves out to be. On the surface, it looks like you get great benefits and time, but the reality ends up being much different, which you don’t realize until you’re already working here. For instance, you are required to take ALL time off in 4-hour increments. Need just an hour for a dental cleaning? You just lost 4 hours of sick time. Need to leave an hour and a half early to pick up your kids? You just lost 4 hours of vacation time. Sadly, you don’t accrue at that rate, so you are literally being forced to take off more time than you get. And there is ZERO flexibility for life issues. Even if you didn’t plan to have to leave early to pick up your kids, you can’t make up that time during the week. You just have to lose the 4 (or 8) hours of time. There are also NO telework opportunities. At all. Ever. They make it very difficult to maintain work-life balance for people, and especially for those with long commutes (some of my coworkers drove over an hour) because you can’t telework one day a week or something to help ease that stress. Also, if you want to push through on a project, there is no incentive. There is NO comp time. For instance, if you are traveling all weekend on behalf of the company, you are still expected to turn up on time Monday morning and work a full day (and the rest of the week). If you stay late to push through on a project, nobody cares – you will never get that time back for your own sanity or at least to be able to spend it with your family. The company encourages being a workaholic with no extra benefit, time, or recognition. That was probably the most depressing aspect of working here. They’ll tell you they have a wonderful tuition reimbursement policy, but they will fail to mention that you can’t get that benefit for your first year and then you ALSO are required stay working for the company for at least a year after you receive the benefit (or pay back the money). It’s basically indentured servitude, and it is particularly depressing when you desperately want to leave such a terrible place. As with most jobs, experiences vary by manager. However, some managers are EXTREMELY bad…to the point of being demoralizing and depressing. There is a lot of hypocrisy among managers – they implement policies they don’t follow. Some managers have been hired or promoted with ZERO ability to lead and ZERO training. They treat employees like underlings and are not collaborative or understanding at all. They also allow for a lot of the backstabbing and whispers around the office. It’s a truly negative environment in most divisions, exacerbated by bad senior management (controlling VPs and out of tune CEO). All in all, work here if you want a boring 8-5 where you can keep your head down and not care about how you are treated. But there are MUCH better companies to work for – where your drive, innovation, and time are respected and valued. This is not that place!