Great Culture, Fast Pace, Many Opportunities - [Support Staff]
Pros
It certainly depends on the city/office, department, and attorney/your team, but I have found that the culture here is incredibly professional while also very relaxed - a unicorn in the field of job searching. Never had a single issue with colleagues or mentors. Everyone is so knowledgeable and truly generous in assistance, training, and general vibes. That is the #1 aspect about working here and what is convincing me to stay longterm. - Endless resources to support Learning & Development: many opportunities to try new things, option to make moves laterally to find the right position or path, and guidance to determine your future goals. - Excellent online databases that will meet almost all your day-to-day needs. Some of the software programs can be slow/inefficient at times, but for the most part things are well organized and meticulously documented. - Interviewing with HR is a really wonderful process. Everyone is communicative and makes interviewees feel comfortable. They are also proactive about suggesting different open positions that may be a better fit. Throughout onboarding and various HR items they've been great as well. - Similar nice things to say about tech support! The onboarding programs about software are super in-depth and remain available to you (both live and recorded programs) so there isn't this wild pressure to remember ever thing the first time you hear it - those databases are a gold mine. - HR and IT are super super responsive and resolve issues with lightning speed. - While most of the attorneys have a huge workload, it feels very curated that you are not expected to push work/life balance boundaries. Never had an issue taking off for sick days, personal time, appointments, last minute family things, etc. A lot of people seem to take only short PTO spurts (like 3 or 4 day weekends) but they all encouraged me to take my weeklong vacation.
Cons
- Most common would be the hybrid schedule, which is only enforced for support staff not attorneys. While many people of different positions/departments work fully remote, most of those that must be in-office would prefer not to be 'required.' - Working in-person "post-COVID" certainly feels like a lack of culture/engagement just because everything is so digitized now. Basically, there doesn't seem to be a lot of benefits to coming in versus working from home. As a pandemic hire, I've met very few people in person compared to the amount I interact with on a daily basis remotely. - Based on research and experience with various applicants + new hires, pay isn't as competitive compared to other Big Law firms. (Benefits are great). - This may be more of an industry standard that firm-specific, but I would say don't take the [support staff] job titles or descriptions at face value. I think it's mostly a *good* thing because you are presented with a lot of opportunities, but there's a number of bullet points from the job description I've either never done or aren't at all relevant to my team.
