Cooley Reviews

Most of the partners and upper management (particularly paralegal management) are incredibly rude, paranoid, dismissive, abusive, and, at times, cruel and blatantly discriminatory. I heard horribly insensitive comments from upper management/ partners on a daily basis- not just personal attacks (though those were commonplace) but blatantly racist, sexist, and homophobic comments. All the time. Both about you and (very often) about current/former employees. Besides the daily explicitly-prejudicial comments, it was painfully clear that the firm was structurally discriminatory as well- white, straight men were almost always given preferential treatment and were highly-praised despite handling about half the workload of other attorneys/paralegals. The women are always expected to stay later, to do more/menial work (like photocopying, even when it's not their job), and were rarely invited to client meetings or partner lunches (several female senior associates were told it would make the men "uncomfortable" to be around attractive women outside of the office). Men who billed 1/2-2/3 of the hours were regularly promoted/praised while the women were harshly criticized/denied benefits, despite doing more work. Besides all of that, the firm literally doesn't care about staff. Case Assistants are subjected to verbal abuse on a daily basis, are expected to be "on-call" constantly (I found myself frantically checking my email whenever I was out of the office, including weekend nights, major holidays like Christmas, and during a family funeral, because I'd been yelled at for not responding to emails quickly enough), receive few benefits, get paid almost nothing (despite how much money the firm's been making), and are rarely, if ever, thanked. I once cried of joy because I got an email from a partner that said "Thanks you did a good job on this" because a simple "thank you" was so rare. Staff management also just doesn't support the staff at all- they're there only for the attorneys. And completely ignore what they say about medical/bereavement leave- they'll accuse you of fabricating a surgery or family death, interrogate you about the deeply personal details in front of your coworkers (I watched this happen to a coworker, who was being interrogated while sobbing in her desk after a family member died), and then doc your pay. I was so excited to work for them but it was one of the worst experiences of my life. Unless you want to work in an office where verbal abuse, constant anxiety, and tears are part of your daily life, AVOID.

There is too much bureaucracy. Everyone just bows down to those in high leadership roles and to powerful attorneys. Beware of this top-down fear-mongering culture. Management likes to act like work is a matter of life and death when in reality they just place inexplicable significance on insignificant matters.