Terrible leadership, awful culture, abusive senior lawyers with zero accountability
Pros
The best part of working here is that if you stay long enough, you'll destroy your health and shorten your lifespan and saving for retirement will be less onerous
Cons
I am writing this review with the hope it will save young lawyers from having the same terrible experience I had working at the Edmonton office of Dentons. Don't work here. Seriously. You can and will become a better lawyer working pretty much anywhere else. Where to even start? The firm likes to send all sorts of internal communications and newsletters telling associates how much the firm cares about diversity, inclusion and mental health. It's fake, performative wokeness without any substance and is all complete BS. If you ever have any personal struggles or challenges, you can expect that you will be treated as weak and deficient and pushed out, either by straight up firing you or making you so miserable you'll just quit. If you ever stand up for yourself, you're painting a bright red bullseye on your back. There are several partners there who have decades long reputations for treating people they work with terribly and they are seemingly allowed to keep doing this with impunity as long as they bring in enough money. The managing partner openly jokes about how this office is a sweat shop, which is only slightly hyperbolic in my opinion and experience. You can expect minimal mentorship and training, completely hands off "onboarding", and that partners and senior lawyers will face zero consequences for bad behavior unless they literally mow down and kill a 16 year old girl while driving drunk. The firm will deliberately impede your growth and development as a lawyer because they know if they teach you too much or you become too competent, you'll have too many opportunities to leave for greener pastures. If you're female, expect that you'll be saddled with tons of non-billable work and the firm will make you all sorts of empty promises about how it will be recognized at bonus time (spoiler - it won't, at least not financially, but if you can pay your student loans in Atta Girls, then be my guest). The main lesson I learned at this firm is that the Old Boys Club is very, very real and not all members of the OBC are male. Several female partners at Dentons are honorary members who overlook and minimize the deplorable behavior of their male partners, which is just as bad. In my opinion, this place is so disgusting it should not be allowed to call itself a law firm and I feel embarrassed that I ever worked here. I tell pretty much every law student and junior lawyer I encounter to stay away from this place for their own mental health and wellbeing.