Great for Experience, Terrible Company Ethics and Employee Morale
Pros
This place is great to start as an intro to your overall career goals and great to get initial experience. As long as you express and are persistent about wanting to move up, you are more than likely to get there. Aside from HR and the higher executive branches, everyone here really cares for their clients and they do their best to put their best foot forward. I have met some of the most inspiring people while working here and created life long relationships. You will grow some thick skin working here and learn great customer service skills. The attorneys are really compassionate and dedicated to explaining the process to you. Attorneys will really value you and make you feel a part of the team. Supervisors are also very supportive and will train you. If you have questions, the supervisors or your assigned attorney are generally very willing to provide you the answers.
Cons
*Most good review written are only posted because they raffled a $100 gift card for those that left a positive review* That being said, everything does hit a stand still. Every single department is overworked, understaffed, underresourced, and not appreciated. Various staff including myself would work overtime and work ourselves into a burn out simply to keep up with the increasing case load. Also in an attempt to prove ourselves to the firm and for an increase in wages, most of us felt that we had to suffer through this. Please note, your wage will not really increase into something that will allow you to survive in California. The benefit packages are TERRIBLE. Most issues will come directly from the intake department that lie to the clients in the initial consultation, which as a paralegal, you have to fix in order to save the case. Any cases that are cancelled will then become a reflection of you as a worker rather than the firm reflecting on their consultation tactics by reeling in poor brown/black folks, or desperate immigrants that don't know any better. There is a crazy turnover rate for a reason. Attorneys and paralegals are constantly leaving because of the pressure/stress and lack of support. Clients are constantly angry and yelling for this reason (which is understandable and I would feel the same if my family was sitting in jail). Clients never know who to call because their paralegals are constantly being replaced. When you are here for the long haul (I was at this firm for a couple of years), you are destined to pick up other peoples messes because it is impossible for one paralegal and attorney to handle such a ridiculous caseload effectively. When issues are brought up to management, the response is always "send an email". When issues are then taken up with the executive branches, they respond with "thats simply what has to be done to be profitable". The firm cares more about monopolizing their practice, rather then providing quality service to their clients. Ultimately, there are various cases that are horribly mismanaged and it is very disheartening to see people going to jail or prison either at all, or for more time than could have been bargained, because there weren't enough staff to pay attention to the cases. The CEO will consistently gloat on LinkedIn that his firm is expanding at record rates and certain departments are reeling in millions of dollars in settlements, meanwhile the criminal and immigration departments are scouring the office for binder clips and labels. The firm would rather open a new office in some remote state rather than apply the resources that the existing offices desperately need. The CEO will say that he will do more, which really means, he will open more offices. In reality he needs to get back into practice and assist the team he consistently judges. You will be made to feel worthless and the COO will make extremely inappropriate comments while also drinking on the job. You will cry either at home or in the office and nobody in management will care about that, as long as you get the work done. There is no such thing as a work life balance here.
