Pros
1. Deep dive into the immigration process 2. Good place to experience interacting with all kinds of people 3. Good from bad: teaches you how to draw boundaries at work and learn life lessons. 4. Each office works independently for the most part, so SF office might not be the same as another branch. 5. If you didn’t drink before, you will probably learn how to there, for better or worse. The cons will tell you why staying drunk is necessary to work here. Before you burn out.
Cons
Let’s get into it. Long story short: There’s a reason the turnover is so high. 1. Outdated management. You know those horror stories about bosses who expect way too much, yet also refuse to correctly compensate you? They’re in SF office, beware. 2. Toxicity is everywhere, the hard part is recognizing who or where. But the most common is gaslighting from management. If you feel like something doesn’t feel right or you didn’t sign up to do this, trust that instinct. That toxicity will slowly spill over into other staff and manifest differently depending on their personality. 3. Gaslighting usually comes in the form of unreasonable expectations. High turnover+ insufficient training regularly leads to burnout and anxiety in many paralegals there. And management will just ignore your concerns and expect you to deal with it. 4. Each team has a high level of dysfunction but here’s the general list. (I won’t name names, but you’ll be able to match who to what easily after about a month.) A. Team has managers that dump 100+ items on people who just started and scold them if it’s late. B. One team literally replaced everyone except 1 because they were backlogged over 3 months worth of work. It got so bad they had to have every other team in the office assist them. And they’re still backlogged. C. One team has their members regularly OT 2-3 hours. At least. And they’re the most structured. D. Newest team and you’ll know who I mean immediately. Full office administrative staff. But you will hate most of them. They have no set protocols, their members have egos and their managers reinforce this mentality. You will regularly run into issues because of how inconsistent it is, whether it’s quality, communication, or expectations. And then when you communicate this with their management, you will either get brushed off or they will actually turn around and blame you. Also, if you expect to get paid well, think again. The company has had billing issues for a while and is stingy as hell because of it. If I only had one piece of advice if you intend to work here, it’s to maintain visibility. Do not feel afraid to be as visible as possible if you feel something isn’t right. Many of the people who will take advantage of you get away with it because you don’t notice and/or don’t report them.