Oversold the role, no clear outline of career progression, very poor pay
Pros
- It offers a very good work-life balance, but then again for the wages that you get, they know they can't expect too much from you. - The Walton Summit office is nice and modern. It is well kept and properly maintained. - The support staff and office managers are delightful. They're such a lovely and kind bunch. - Some people are quite nice, although some are overly competitive while others seriously lack interpersonal skills.
Cons
- The pay is well below market rate - The role was massively oversold. I still cannot understand how they expect a solicitor to do what is considered elsewhere as a paralegal's role . Unfortunately, they weren't upfront or transparent with what the role entailed and they had my CV from the outset and knew that my experience was more than what they were looking for. After having had several discussions with the heads of department, I was given more promises and reassurances that I would be involved in proper legal files, yet nothing whatsoever has changed. Very disappointing to see this "one-way" approach which I sincerely find disingenuous. Just make sure you scrutinise the job role and ask a lot of questions in the interview as to what exactly you will be doing on a day-to-day basis and what your caseload will look like. After having spoken to other people who started at the same time as me, they felt the same about their job roles. - Office culture is quite shocking. There is a push for working full-time in the office in my department, yet the atmosphere is awfully depressing. Nobody even bothers to say good morning or goodbye, or to ask how your day has been. There is very little conversation throughout the day. There are people working in the team for over 5 years' who are still in their shells and don't feel comfortable with letting their personalities out. It's a real shame to see and is probably the worst office culture I have ever experienced in my life. Having said that, there is a general feel that you are expected to just work in silence. - There's an unnecessary push for not having a "hierarchy", and as a result you've got paralegals and trainees assuming roles of senior solicitors. Some people feel the constant need to prove their worth to management and to clients, and It's genuinely tiring and embarrassing to see. - The tech is way behind the times. The servers almost always crash, the case management system is not properly populated, leading to a lot of delays in sending emails due to unrecognised contacts. Precedents are awfully messy, copy-pasting precedents between files or populating desktops (instead of using a precedent bank) is normalised. - There is a serious lack of morale and enthusiasm in general. You get the odd jolly person but most people have silently quit for a long while.
