Locke Lord LLP

Pros:

5.Former Employee, less than 1 yearAmazing Firm!Summer Associate RecommendPros-Super welcoming and kind, I never felt like an outsider.Cons-I wasn't sure how much we were expected to work in terms of hours as summer associates.

Advice to law firm management:

Respect the field

Pros:

Not Much

Cons:

George C and Lawyers here are just in it for the money. Lawyers get a bad name because lawyers like these

Partners to Avoid and Why:

George C

Advice to law firm management:

OPEN YOUR HEARTS AND STOP CRUELLY KILLING PEOPLE. FOR MONEY,.

Pros:

Not impressed. They treated my disabled husband horribly. He was a lawyer there. They fired him because of his disability and then, according to Sheryl Hanley, deleted all his employment files. I asked for them. She said: "Most items would not be in a document form and emails generally are not retained on our system beyond the retention term." He died a few months after he was fired, due to his disability, leaving a wife and three children behind with no support whatsoever.

Cons:

ABOVE.

Partners to Avoid and Why:

GEORGE C. ~ HE'S A FAKE

Favorite Things About this Firm:

NOT SURE, THERE MAY BE SOME. NOT APPLICABLE HERE. THEY ADDED TO THE DEATH OF THE FATHER OF MY THREE CHILDREN. THEY HURT HIM SOOOOOOO MUCH.

Advice to law firm management:

I'd like to see this firm expand its current office location and hire new staff members to help out on cases and help out interns such as myself.

Pros:

I worked here as an intern and learned the in's and out's while here. I enjoyed the fact that everyone is very friendly and always willing to lend you a hand when in need.

Cons:

I felt as though the office was slightly small and that we could have used more staff members to help out on cases. I also thought that the cases were somewhat tedious.

Advice to law firm management:

Treat all of your workers as equals. Work on fixing management.

Pros:

Attorneys are collegial and supportive. Compensation is tied to performance. The benefits are great.

Cons:

If you are not an attorney, you are treated as insignificant. Management has a bad reputation. Some of the workers are unprofessional.

Advice to law firm management:

I think that a little more honesty and clarity up front about compensation would go a long way with associates and employees. People may be comfortable receiving no bonus or a low bonus, but they want to know exactly what compensation they will get for what work. If someone believes they are going to get a market bonus and they kill themselves to bill 2000 hours and receive only $5k when their friends at other firms who worked slightly less receive double that amount, it can create resentment. Of course it would be great to get higher bonuses but I think honesty on the front end is even more important because setting appropriate expectations is everything. If people are aware that the bonus scale is not market, there isn't that sense that they have been wronged or misled when the $5k bonus comes around, just gratitude that they are getting a bonus at all.

Pros:

The people that I work with in the Boston office of Locke Lord are some of the best around - they are smart, thoughtful, and know how to connect with their coworkers and make work an okay place to be. The growth potential for the Boston office is huge right now, there is a lot of room to build a unique practice that suits your needs and there is a lot of support from management to make that happen. Also, the salary for associates is market and Locke Lord was among the first to make the jump to 180k starting salary for first year associates.

Cons:

If you are looking to show up somewhere and bill 3000 hours a year without having to lift a finger to find work and build your practice, I think Locke Lord in general could be a good firm for you but the Boston office itself - as it is still in a period of post-merger transition - is not. You need to be willing to be proactive and engage with people and think critically about what you want to work on and how you can contribute. One issue the firm at large has is that it is very opaque about associate compensation. The compensation system is based on tiers that each associate is placed in seemingly subjectively based on their hours and a variety of other factors. Also, the firm bills itself as giving market bonuses but it does not. You are eligible for a low market bonus (like $5k) if you bill at least 2000 hours, although the average time billed per associate across the firm is something like 1850, which means many people get no bonus at all.

Career Opportunities:

Compensation & Benefits:

Work/Life Balance:

Senior Management:

Culture & Values:

Length of Employment:

3-4 years