Fragomen reviews

This was my first job out of college. I needed a job and according to the job description, it sounded pretty cool. Boy was I wrong. The case load is absolutely insane, the whole time I was there I was told, "Oh it's just busy season it will calm down." It doesn't. You are assigned more cases than you can possibly complete, especially when you have to make stupid corrections like adding a comma, or removing a comma. Each attorney has their own way of doing things and you don't know which attorney will be reviewing your case, so one attorney will prefer something that another will take you to remove. The attention to detail is absolutely soul sucking and frustrating. They expect you to become an expert and be able to keep up with the case load very quickly. At my 60 day performance review, I wasn't meeting their expectation in my pace because of the learning curve, and without a conversation, they told me I was being moved to the in office, admin team. I put my two weeks in shortly after. The entire time of my employment I was stressed, depressed, and no one cared. The culture is a constant grind. I would get emails from attorneys at 3 am. If you have any ounce of self-love, don't do this. This level of horrible work/life balance and stress is not worth having "experience," for a resume. Go work at a company that actually values employee retainment and happiness. When I started my team had 8, 4 people quit after I did, and I wasn't there longer than 3 months. My biggest regret was that I also read glassdoor reviews on Fragomen and didn't take them seriously, and I learned the hard way. Don't do what I did. Go somewhere where you will be valued, taught, have encouraging support from management, and a fun culture. That is not and will never be Fragomen as long as they continue to treat their employees this way.

*Another disclaimer: I am young and just out of college, so I needed a job and basically took the first one I could. While I do not want to quit anytime soon, and don’t dread coming into work at all, I have noticed A LOT of things that could be changed. First, the way I was hired on was extremely stressful. Almost always you will not get directly hired, you will be a temporary worker on a contract, making about $14 an hour. You’re under the assumption that you will be eventually hired on, but for about 3 months I was just hoping everyday someone would come up to me and offer me the full time job (which eventually happened but it was stressful thinking at every moment I might have to find a new job tomorrow). If you are competent and get your work done, you will probably go full time but you have to ask beforehand because I’ve seen people get strung along like myself not knowing their fate. I will also say that when you are a temporary employee, most everyone else treats you like your dirt on their shoes, but that just be my experience because I am sensitive by nature. Now onto company culture, even though most of the employees here are young (under 26ish), this firm is clearly run by boomers and on old ideas of what a workplace should be. The lower on the totem pole you are here, the less important you feel and are treated. If you are looking for a fun “millennial” type workplace, this isn’t it. HR is almost nonexistent. I have yet to see any attempt in my time here to change the way things run, regardless of the 15+ people I have already seen quit in the last 5 months. The turnover rate is incredibly high and very discouraging for newer hires, I am already under the impression I won’t be here long because I bet I will eventually get fed up as well. I have also noticed that the environment and relationships between employees is very much like high school. People are petty due to the competitive environment (not sure why this exists because there really isn’t much mobility or reason) and I have yet to feel empowered enough to make many work friends because of the rude comments and behaviors of employees to others (However, there are a few extremely sweet people I have met & I bet this behavior is a direct result of mismanagement of employees). The amount of times I have been searching for an answer to a problem or asking for help of some sort, I am met with just downright condescension. From all sorts of people in roles “above” mine and my direct position. I have also witnessed PARTNER’s gossiping about their Assistant Paralegals and Attorney’s. There is no sense of teamwork. Regardless of the fact that almost every single attorney has a team of people under them whom report to them directly, you can tell most of them would rather not. Many attorneys make poor managers and it is clear they never got trained or learned how to manage people and it shows. The caseload is very high. Depending on what team you are on and what time of year it is, you could be expected to work 10+ hours a day and on weekends. Take from that what you will. I could go on even further, but I should get back to work.