Fragomen reviews

3.4

52% would recommend to a friend

(2,192 total reviews)
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Austin T. Fragomen

65% approve of CEO

40% positive business outlook

Fragomen has an employee rating of 3.4 out of 5 stars, based on 2,192 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The Fragomen employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Legal industry (3.7 stars).

Reviews by job title

2K reviews
1.0
Feb 1, 2019
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Pay is reasonable but does not justify the environment you'll be faced with.

Cons

Here are my humble observations: 1) You will be verbally berated, not if, but when things go wrong, as supervisors refuse to accept accountability and will routinely displace blame. This routinely takes place in front of other peers. When brought to HR's attention, they neglect to act. 2) Management and attorneys will be nice as long as you don't offer any opinions on implementing different perspectives. You will be passive aggressively excluded from the well-defined cliques. Purveying, negative comments are created and perpetuated to fit the narrative of the Supervising Paralegal. They are routinely spread in front of management who is unwilling to assess whether or not true or manipulation. 3) You can willingly volunteer your personal work/life balance and time with friends/loved ones to work upwards of 10 to 12 hour daily shifts only to be told next time ask first before dedicating time to extended projects. 4) Managing Attorneys, although claiming to have an open door policy, will bury their head in the sand to avoid confronting interoffice politics. 5) HR is aware of these continuing behaviors (see the other GlassDoor, Indeed and internet reviews for the Phoenix office) and do nothing to address the hostile work environment. 6) Turnover is extremely high for a reason. You see people routinely disappear because they simply cannot take it anymore. They are the smart ones to figure the Phoenix office culture out quickly and take action. 7) No matter how many cases you prepare, draft, file, you will always be considered not moving fast enough. You will openly be told other paralegals have an equal or more excessive workload and once you research, you find out just how false those claims really are. 8) Your cases will be routinely shifted to inexperienced legal assistants, paralegal and administrative staff. If anything goes awry, it will unequivocally be your fault. 9) Turnaround times for preparing, drafting, filing cases is unrealistic for the sake of attracting and retaining client's business. Good luck in requesting additional help from your supervisor. 10) Cases are drafted with considerable mistakes by one of Fragomen's teams abroad for U.S. based clients. You're told this is done to streamline case processing, however, to correct the mistakes made, you required to go back and familiarize yourself with the particulars. This adds to the time required to draft, which could have been ultimately accomplished by you and a team mate if the firm was sufficiently staffed.

4.0
Apr 6, 2017
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

I'm going to caveat these positives by saying that they can and do vary WILDLY on a team-by-team basis. + Nice, supportive, interesting co-workers. + Lots of opportunities to learn about immigration, especially in the entry level roles, to see if it is something that interests you. + Mostly reasonable hours, decent flexibility with WFH once you reach a certain level - even as a paralegal, good PTO/sick time allotment + Benefits are mostly good - 401k matching and pre-tax transit benefits are great, health insurance is adequate. Other benefits that you would expect for a global firm of Fragomen's stature are lacking - for example, there's no readily available gym/fitness benefit. + Good location. + Internal mobility. + Strong focus on diversity in the firm, which is really valuable. + Good career opportunities.

Cons

- The biggest negative overall I would say is that things do vary wildly from team to team. Management styles, processes, people, everything depends on the team that you're on. There's a big focus on making sure that we're top of the field in immigration knowledge, which is good, however there doesn't appear to be focus on creating a consistent, transparent, accountable, and supportive firm culture, which is what holds the firm back from being a great employer. - Going off of that, senior management here values what the partners managing teams here think more than associates/junior staff. Seniority is certainly valuable, but when issues arise the concerns of associates and junior staff typically aren't taken as seriously as the perspective of the partner. If you're on a team where the partner is a bad manager or deflects blame rather than take accountability for the culture/processes/actions of their team, then the sh!t rolls downhill. - Partners and supervising attorneys do not appear to have any significant management training, nor does it appear to be recognized that management training (beyond HR basics - how to motivate/develop/coach people) would be really valuable. Maybe it exists in ways that I'm not seeing, but from my vantage point this is lacking. - The technology situation is ancient and abysmal. Truly. At a certain point typewriters would be more functional.

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Fragomen Response
9y
We really appreciate the detailed feedback, on both the pro's and con's. Due to receiving similar feedback, and the results of our two recent Employee Engagement Surveys, we have identified the need to improve technology, to provide better training and development opportunities for managers, and to identify better forums for the Paralegals and Case Workers to express their invaluable opinions. Rest assured that steps are being taken on all three, the results of which we hope to be clear over the next 12 months. I'd certainly like to hear more from you on your thoughts, and reassure you that the steps to make improvements in these areas have begun. Feel free to contact me at gwhyld@fragomen.com (Gary Whyld - Head of Talent Acquisition)
2.0
Jul 31, 2015
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Very good benefits and PTO. My peers were very smart and nice people. Good place to start out to develop a solid foundation in immigration. Had the pleasure of working for a few attorneys who served as great mentors.

Cons

Attorneys and Client Service Managers are generally good at their jobs, but very awful at managing people. Teams are generally understaffed for the amount work coming in. That, along with a lack of training and lower salaries (compared to similar positions in the industry), leads to employee frustration which, in turn, leads to high employee turnover. New employees start and the cycle repeats itself. Low employee morale overall. Also, some attorneys are incapable of taking accountability for the work that the team puts out. When something goes wrong, they immediately point fingers at the caseworker (despite the fact that they conducted a "legal review" of the case).

Viewing 19 - 21 of 2,192 Reviews

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