Avantages
The work is challenging and fun. The clients are prestigious. The support staff is excellent, willing to go the extra mile. Work/Life balance is promoted. The San Francisco/Oakland Offices are easy in terms of commuting on either BART, ferry or car. Commuter cheques subsidize 1/3 of transportation expenses. Random cupcakes and Friday bagels.
Inconvénients
PHENOMENAL COMMUNICATION CHALLENGES!! Retaliation, Sabotage, Gossiping Cliques, Inhumane treatment where some partner-track attorneys treat staff as expendable and worthless. Lack of middle management yields bad workflow and there is no buffer between attorney/staff working relationships. The managing office partners lack effective, collaborative leadership skills noted by the higher-than-normal turnover rate of associates, staff and other. Sub-standard technology with high-standard expectations - which means there's disjointedness with the powers that be (i.e..... management). 🍇 A Grapevine (back-stabbing) culture promoted by at least one of the office managing partners creates a permanent toxic culture similar to the White House with Pres. Donald von Trump. A fellow staffer even moved across the San Francisco Bay to the Oakland Office to escape the culture set by the office managing partner after that partner arbitrarily called a "behavior hearing" on a class of staff members that included the staffer. Billable hours are inflated due to frequent technology malfunctioning and frequent communication break downs: 90% of the communication is restricted to partners/associates -- meaning staff are sometimes last to receive key crucial communications for which legal staff(paralegals) vitally contribute. In some instances staff are vulnerable and held responsible for attorneys' miscommunications of those key crucial communications. This firm endorses a climate of attorney status being holier-than-thou. And staffers are subjected to professional cruelty and direct retaliation by the "holy." The proof is in the higher-than-normal turnover.