Phew… where to begin? - Recensione dipendente - Assistant presso Freshfields

- 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 Their technology is outdated, or majorly flawed in design (i.e., the phones are an absolute mess).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