Fragomen Employee Reviews about "paralegals"

Pros

- Good place to learn... if you are a quick learner. - Generous PTO benefits. - Depending on your team placement, you may have the opportunity to work with an experienced paralegal who will take the time to train you effectively.

Cons

- If you show any initiative/work ethic at all, they will throw a backbreaking amount of work on you. - The employee turnover rate is so high, you are constantly picking up cases that someone started, and have no idea where it might be in the process. - No real training. The only way to successfully learn the inner workings of the job is to have a more senior paralegal who is willing to take the time to sit down with you and teach you how to be successful. - As others have stated, your experience will truly depend on the team you are placed on/hired onto. A handful of the attorneys are truly good people, who respect your position as a caseworker, and understand that you probably have no immigration experience. Other attorneys expect you to have read the entirety of 8CFR on the weekend before you started at the firm. - Opportunities for growth are forced upon you. Toward the end of my tenure at the firm, our team was so short staffed that I was tasked with drafting responses to Requests for Evidence issued by the government. This is a job traditionally handled by an attorney, but was thrust upon me, an Assistant Paralegal I, with 1.5 years of experience. While they were certainly interesting cases to work on, they involved several hours of research and gathering of evidence, on top of my normal caseload. - No opportunities for professional development. We never had any opportunities for firm wide training, instruction, or networking events sponsored by the firm. Not that the paralegals at the firm would have had any time to attend these events, but they would have been a nice thought. - Lastly, nearly all of the paralegals that I worked closely with were negatively affected by the working environment in some way. I will only speak for myself, but my mental health took a turn for the worse as my teams situation continued to deteriorate. On more than one occasion I woke up from a fever dream, thinking that I had forgotten something about a case and was being berated by an attorney. I can happily say that I have been out the firm for nearly 4 months, and I am so much happier.

Pros

-Excellent co-workers. Paralegals are bright and Attorneys are brilliant. - Nice office environment.

Cons

- No training. - I began drafting immediately and learned on the go. Eventually I found success in the role but it took a lot of harshly worded critiques on my first drafts for at least the first 3 months. - Consistently expected to work overtime outside of the busy season and had difficulty saying no as the rest of the office until 8 p.m. - 10 p.m. every night. - Work load was so high paralegals would regularly alter the databases and billing projections to show that they had accomplished work that had not yet been completed to avoid being reprimanded. - Was consistently drowning in work due to a huge gap between management and employees. Eventually I was having recurring stress dreams every night and became physically ill. I went to multiple doctors appointments and after $1,000 in medical bills the doctors found nothing to be conclusively wrong. One month after I left Fragomen my symptoms disappeared and have not come back since.

Pros

Decent salaries, a lot of fun, nice, smart people (including paralegals, associates, and partners) work there

Cons

Work life balance issues, decisions seem to be made by people who have no idea what it's like to work here and these decisions make our lives more difficult

Pros

- you will make lots of money because you will work an obscene amount of overtime (~10-12 hours/week). - you will have something respectable on your resume when you inevitably apply to law school to escape paralegal life. - the attorneys are generally very approachable and will help if you need it. - PTO is very flexible, and your managers are never in, so there is lots of freedom and little to no oversight. - you will learn how to communicate with all types of ridiculous clients. - in reality, though, you will learn a lot about what it ~really~ means to be in the legal field and will gauge a sense of if this is what you want to do in your future.

Cons

- long, unregulated hours (sometimes leaving 8-9 pm), weekend hours, depending on the team/client. - little to no communication within teams, resulting in lots of wasted time and ineffective client services. - people are promoted, seemingly, based on length of time with the firm rather than merit, resulting in a lot of wildly ineffective managers. - lots of angst/competition within certain teams. People put in tons of work here and really have to fight to be recognized. While the passion is great, the lack of appropriate means of recognition often results in tension, anger, silent treatments, and outbursts.

Pros

The atmosphere can be friendly amongst paralegals and there is free food on Fridays. Pros and cons are completely dependent upon which team you are assigned, and switching teams is next to impossible.

Cons

Unrealistic expectations, nonexistent operations management, insufficient training, and extremely poor technology. You are not given the tools needed to succeed and any recognition of this is disregarded by upper management. You are constantly made to feel as if you are failing at your job, even if you are a top performer. Management and HR are apathetic to surveys, suggestions, complaints, and the high-turnover rate. Any communication from paralegals to HR and upper management is swiftly disregarded or treated as insubordination.