Berry Appleman & Leiden Reviews

Pros

Great staff who are hard workers and very knowledgeable.

Cons

Overtime is discouraged, but many do work longer hours than they are scheduled to work.

Pros

The people (immigration assistants, paralegals, and some senior managers) are fantastic. You will make friends the rest of your life if you work here. Regarding the work environment, some partners are a pleasure to work with, but may God have mercy on your souls if you end up with some of them.

Cons

The pay, lack of rewards, and uncompetitive benefits package. Also, you have to bill every e-mail you write and every application or petition you prepare (even though most clients are flat fees), which makes no sense. If you read any political philosophy about Marxism or lean system management, simply combine both fields, and you arrive at Berry Appleman & Leiden.

Advice to Senior Management

If you hire top-of-the-line undergrads with superior extra-curricular activities, then you should probably listen to them more. It's surprising how 95% of the IAs and Paralegals were smarter than the associates and senior associates. Since immigration is such a small community, you need to give more to your employees because most-if not all- are dissastisfied.

Pros

BAL is a great place to learn how to handle volume processing of cases. They have a good data base system to assist you in managing your case load.

Cons

Unfortunately, volume processing can lead to many mistakes and thus, quality of work suffers. The biggest weaness of BAL is lack of leadership and management by the partners in all of its offices. While there are some good attorneys and paralegals - many are not competent but will not be disciplined, trained or let go - giving the appearance, that BAL is just focused on keeping up the body count. Turnover is very high, leading to staffing issues, client discontent and issues with service. Management does not value their strong employees, which is why many leave.

Advice to Senior Management

The partners need to work on addressing the issues at BAL rather than ignoring them. They also need to learn to work better together - in SF and across its offices.

Pros

1) Super friendly coworkers! The Legal Assistants (LAs) routinely helped each other out with questions and welcomed new LAs. The lawyers also were

2) Learn and practice the basics of filing business immigration forms

3) Great job for recent college graduates

4) Over-time was not required nor encouraged; it's truly a 9am-5pm place ... and feels great to walk away at precisely 5pm.

Cons

1) The pure "paperwork/database work" really bothered me; there is zero face-to-face contact with immigrant applicants; it's all done through phone calls and email correspondence. Of course, this is business immigration, NOT family immigration, so if you're looking for a more social, interactive job, it's best to switch over and do family immigration law.

2) Similarly, this is strictly a "get the forms done" position: if you're curious about policy, politics, or any socio-economic concerns with business immigration, this is NOT the place to learn about anything not directly related to your job duties.

3) The work is very fast-paced, and there are large caseloads: they will tell you this in the interview, and it's true.

Advice to Senior Management

- I found the Legal Assistants (LAs) to be a very inspiring and interesting bunch; if seminars or workshops on immigration were offered, I imagine the room would fill up. These could be geared towards business immigration (to help educate LAs and improve understanding of their work), as well as other related topics. This is helpful for both career advancement and for personal fulfillment: it's no surprise that people enjoy their job more when it opens horizons and offers room for debate / education.

Pros

The location is the only thing positive.

Cons

Some managers are great whereas others are quite biased. The latter results in competent, hardworking types being passed over in favour of incompetent staff members. Favouritism seems to be a constant.

Advice to Senior Management

Be fair and perhaps there won't be such a high turnover in staff.

Pros

Benefits were good - Salary was market, if not somewhat better. Social functions were good. Offices in great condition (thank you clients). Legal Assistants and some attorneys were good managers...

Cons

Reporting to a handful of partners made things difficult. Do-able, but difficult. The managing partner was a tyrant...an unforgiving, mean, cold East Coaster who tolerated not a fraction below perfection. If you are thinking of an administrative career within a law firm, do not look here. Thankfully I resigned to better working conditions. Never have I worked for such an ogar, who litterally made others cry.

Advice to Senior Management

Hopefully by now the reigns of managing partner have been turned over to a more competant partner...a more genuine, compassionate and non-toxic partner.

Pros

Good professional experience, congenial atmosphere, friendly coworkers, set hours.

Cons

Communication is severely lacking from the top down, underpaid compared to other Legal Assistants/Paralegals in the same legal area, little room for advancement, no follow through on commitments from senior management, and no access to company policies and procedures (employee handbook) for over a year.

I used to enjoy working here - it's a shame that has changed.

Advice to Senior Management

This should be obvious, but when your staff accesses salary survey data on a regular basis pay them fairly. We are aware of how underpaid we are.

Communication needs to be improved roughly 200%. Treat your staff like adults and you'll see better morale and appreciation.

Pros

Good exposure to a wide range of topics and case types. A lot of autonomy in client management and contact and responsibility in problem solving.

Cons

Too many managers and a lot of infighting among them. No leadership because all of the non-equity partners are just fighting with each other to try to get to equity partnership instead of providing leadership to the associates that work with them.

Advice to Senior Management

Senior management should really watch what middle management is doing to ensure better quality of leadership at the mid-level. Making spreadsheets and doing charming prospects at client pitches does not make you a good lawyer or allow you to provide good leadership to newer attorneys to the organization and legal assistants. As a service provider, you must be able to provide the service, not just sell it.

Pros

immigration law is fairly interesting work even though it's all procedural. working on cases from all over the world and coming into contact with regulations in the US and globally can be exciting. work visas, naturalization, health requirements, security clearances, notarization practices - each country has their own way of doing these things and how they do these things exposes their underlying culture, problems, and concerns.

Cons

they work you hard with little guidance. middle-management manages up. some attorneys are better than others.

Advice to Senior Management

executive leadership -- i'd recommend skip level interviews and peer reviews to get a stronger sense of how your attorneys are managing their direct reports.

Pros

There are lots of good things. They tend to hire nice, interesting people. It's located in the Financial District. The work is interesting, and depending on which team you are on it can be really great.

Cons

Experiences vary greatly depending on which team you are on.

Advice to Senior Management

Please be more cognizant of some of your employees' disatisfaction.