Maybe it's because I've been working for almost a decade before I accepted this position and I wasn't a fresh-faced college graduate with no experience, so I expected much more.
I realized on my third day that I would resign much sooner than I thought when I shadowed someone of 10 years. We went through billing, the petition form, and the cover letter of support for a client. Why is someone with over a decade of experience performing the same tasks as a new person? I looked around and saw that it wasn't just the one paralegal - it was everyone. It became apparent that entering templates with foreign national and client information would my task every single moment of every single day.
When I read reviews on Glassdoor that it was a "visa factory", I wasn't sure of what it meant. The job is data entry and when a foreign national doesn't fully explain something, you reword or expand on it. That's it. It is mundane. It is boring. It is dry. Done with one case? They never stop coming, so onto the next one. Outside of my last week, my caseload required me to be constantly processing cases every moment. You walk in, sit down, look at the case calendar, and your whole day is already planned due to you knowing how long it takes you to perform each step; furthermore, there were times when I had to work through my lunch to complete the case load.
It's absolutely lonely. Due to the caseload necessitating that you stare at your computer for the whole day, most employees will put in their headphones and just focus on the case load; in addition, your team may be spread across different sections of the office and sometimes multiple cities. These factors will lead to a severe lack of social opportunities and social interaction.
The firm suffers from poor communication. Teams are placed with the type of client and the type of stay (temporary or permanent). As a result, teams with different clients do not interact with each other and even different type of stays (but the same client) teams do not interact to a certain degree. Certain employees may receive updated documentation that other employees do not have. Lawyers may request specific content layouts adjustment in one employee's reviewed draft and others employees won't find out until they make the same draft error. I remember training individuals and I would be asked "Why do you do it this way?" and my only response would be "I don't know, but I haven't been told to change it yet". Why am I being assigned cases when I am on vacation and are due the day I return? Why am I assigned cases at 4PM and I only know from looking at the calendar, not any kind of contact? Why am I being assigned a different types of cases when nobody has told me where to find those documents or how it differs from others?
There were odd micromanagement tactics that reminded me of a call center at times. Clocking in and clocking out system. Only allowed to take a lunch between 11:30AM and 2PM. Despite technically working 37.5 hours and getting paid for 40 hours, I had to ask permission to work past 37.5 hours even when I wasn't getting paid extra for it. Supervisor would instant message and email for consistent case updates. I would go several days without interacting face-to-face a supervisor. Management that were quite friendly on my first day never greeted me afterwards.
The firm uses outdated, stitched together technology that runs on virtual machines. This results in weekly and almost daily technical issues that I have never before experienced in any professional environment. 2012-era browsers that many websites don't even allow. 2012-era virtual machine technology. 2008-era email/billing/relationship software. It appears that this may be resolved in the nearby future due to the number of technology related positions they are hiring for.
As adults, we understand that skill development comes from taking on new projects, interacting with interesting challenges, and learning from your failures. Skill development does not come completing Microsoft Word templates every moment of every day. The promotion trajectory is quite transparent from the email blasted anniversaries. 2 years results in Assistant Paralegal II. 3 - 5 years results in Paralegal. 5 - 8 years results in Senior Paralegal. They perform the same tasks. Unless you go to law school or become a supervisor (after Senior Paralegal), there's nothing else.
Ultimately, this turned me away from the legal field all together. It could be just Fragomen. It could just be immigration law. It could just be transactional nature of the firm. I'll never know. When I started, I was led to believe that I would be learning an interesting field. That I would be helping foreign nationals for employment purposes. That I would experience professional and skill development. That my responsibilities would grow over time.
Instead, I experienced useless, long video trainings of powerpoint presentations that did not apply to me. My eyes glazed over when I wrote cover letter after cover letter stating why a certain foreign national was better than everyone else on the planet, when it reality - they could just get someone else. My daily responsibilities required completing Microsoft Word templates and being frustrated with the technology. I performed the same exact tasks at the end of my employment that I had at the beginning, just to an increased frequency due to being reliable.
