Freshfields reviews

3.7

68% would recommend to a friend

(642 total reviews)

Edward Braham and Stephan Eilers

50% approve of CEO

71% positive business outlook

Freshfields has an employee rating of 3.7 out of 5 stars, based on 642 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The Freshfields employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Legal industry (3.8 stars).

Reviews by job title

642 reviews
1.0
Mar 5, 2022

Phew… where to begin?

Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

- Unstuffy environment - Legal and Non-Legal Staff receive same benefit package. - They are good about communicating the time the office will close the day before major holidays. - Casual Fridays - Some schedule flexibility

Cons

- Some Assistants are very overworked, while others do absolutely nothing all day long. Both will receive the same salary, regardless of the difference in work-load. - If you’re competent, prepare yourself for triple the work and four times the scrutiny. You’re better off pretending to be completely incompetent — they’ll assign you a slow desk where the lawyers are totally self-sufficient. - If you are competent at 3E and Client Billing, you will be inundated with billing requests. Staying late was a daily occurrence due to the never ending sloppy bills and edits to work detail narratives. Management doesn’t care if the whole workday is devoted to cleaning up other peoples’ sloppy work. - If you complain about being overworked, or having to deal with nasty assistants who simply do not care about their work product, be prepared to be punished. - As long as assistants are at their desks on time, HR doesn’t care if no work is done, or if two hour lunches are taken for made-up doctor appointments, or if folks disappear to gossip or water their plants. There are no considerations or exceptions made for the assistants working through their lunch hour during 12 hour days. - Middle management is useless. - There is bare bones IT on site in the NY office. You have to call the London help desk 9 times out of 10. Their technology is outdated, or majorly flawed in design (i.e., the phones are an absolute mess). They don’t roll out new technology at the same time firm-wide. So, the NY Office might be using one program while Frankfurt is using something else. - Their billing practices are odd and unlike anywhere else I’ve worked. - Non-existent Diversity. Non-existent push to hire Diverse candidates. Tone deaf when these issues are raised. - Incredibly high turnover in every department, including staff and lawyers. Not even partners are exempt

5.0
Mar 5, 2022

Great Firm

Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Great culture and lots of responsibility

Cons

Nothing of note so far

4.0
Mar 5, 2022

Learned a lot

Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Intellectual and interesting environment to work in with people who really care about their business

Cons

Lawyer vs non lawyer culture still exists

Viewing 283 - 285 of 642 Reviews

Glassdoor has 884 Freshfields reviews submitted anonymously by Freshfields employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if Freshfields is right for you.