FosterQuan Reviews

Current Employee – been working at FosterQuan full-time for more than a year

Pros – Paid benefits and parking; flexible work schedule; and, friendly work environment.

Cons – Very low pay; no defined career path; no training; sketchy accounting; and pay raises are nearly non existent.

Advice to Senior Management – Implement training program for on boarding legal assistants; put in place career paths/ goals for staff; and, pay prevailing wage!

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at FosterQuan full-time

Pros – Paid parking in downtown Austin. Nice perk.

Cons – Even after years of service you will be stuck in a dead end job with no hope for a promotion. Don't let the boss fool you. He will promise you the world, and you will do your best to achieve goals. He will find a way to tell you how much you have disappointed the firm, even when your clients are happy with you.

Advice to Senior Management – Get a grip and stop having internal fights. You have real people with real lives working for you.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm not optimistic about the outlook for this company

Current Employee – been working at FosterQuan full-time for more than 7 years

Pros – It's a well established law firm and unlike many law firms, the work you do directly helps actual people. It's nice working at a place where people are concerned with doing good. The workplace is familial and friendly (especially following the merger and the departure of chronic gripers) and there are many "lifers" happy to assist and share knowledge. Benefits are good, and after more than 6 years, I couldn;pt imagine working anywhere else.

Cons – Downtown traffic can be a pain (they also have a Galleria office)

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

Current Employee – been working at FosterQuan

Pros – Flexibility in work hours; great benefits...

Cons – Promotion and raises are not really based on merit

Former Employee – worked at FosterQuan full-time for more than a year

Pros – Paid health insurance and paid parking.

Cons – Office politics, sketchy accounting and operating procedures

Advice to Senior Management – Listen to your employees. They have amazing ideas that will make the firm better for employees and clients. Just getting by and fattening your own pockets is not healthy. Try being honest and open. Morale has only dropped and nobody feels that they can trust anyone around them, especially management. Throwing money at a problem is not a solution.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm not optimistic about the outlook for this company

Former Employee – worked at FosterQuan full-time for more than 3 years

Pros – FosterQuan offers paid parking in downtown Austin and Houston (Downtown office only), a very nice health insurance plan, and $20K in paid life insurance. The Firm pays for a hotel room for its Austin employees attending the Firm Holiday party in December and they offer a few other events outside of the office, like the Firm picnic and Dragon Boat races. They also let you have a bit more flexibility in your work hours.

Cons – Office politics at FosterQuan can very easily get out of hand. The act of giving your two weeks notice can cause you to be labeled a traitor. Every single employee is viewed as replaceable and dispensable in the eyes of management. Salaries are low, pay raises are minimal, and holiday bonuses are smaller compared to other companies and firms of similar size. Case loads can be a bit heavy and the solution from management is to have you work more overtime.
Most new hires are recent college graduates or fresh out of law school. The most experienced and senior staff have been leaving for other law firms at an alarming rate. This often results in teams that are scrambling to keep up and learn how to do the job as fast as they can. Clients have started to perceive the lack of experienced staff and are leaving at an alarming rate, too.
Benefits, while being good on the whole, do not kick in until you pass your 90 day evaluation period. According to the handbook, once you put in your two weeks notice, you no longer have access to your paid time off. Any unused paid time off is lost after you leave the Firm-you do not get it back in any monetary form.
FosterQuan is the product of a merger between two smaller immigration law firms. The two law firms were different in terms of their management style and accounting practices. They still have not reconciled the two very different systems, resulting in messy accounting and confusing and inefficient processes.
The software programs employed at FosterQuan are very outdated, slow, and constantly freeze up.

Advice to Senior Management – Learn to value your employees and recognize the hard work they do before they leave to other law firms. Control the level of politics and drama and try to foster a happier work environment among the staff. Try to alleviate the heavy case loads that many of the legal staff have and raise wages to be competitive with other firms.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm not optimistic about the outlook for this company

Current Employee – been working at FosterQuan

Pros – Flexible work hours. Great parking benefits and central offices for the Houston and Austin locations. 3 weeks PTO (this includes sick, personal and vacation though), 4 weeks of PTO after 4 years of service. Unless you're on their "watch list", you really do have a great deal of flexibility and freedom in your day-to-day duties.

Cons – For support staff, FQ does not offer any room for growth and your position truly is a dead-end. Yes, you take on additional, perhaps even more complex duties over the years, but the pay increase is slim, management recognition is none, and you'll soon find yourself wondering how many years its been since you last used your brain. Office politics truly are out of control and many people believe leaving the Company to continue school or take a better opportunity is a traitorous act. In a field that really can help the local community, the firm rarely takes on pro-bono or cases at a discounted rate and it certainly does not encourage its employees to assist in immigration events outside of or in connection with work. Aside, of course, from lobbying for immigration reform, that will in turn lead to more business.

Advice to Senior Management – FQ management should recognize the importance of individuals before they resign. Retention seems to be a foreign concept at this Company and, since the merger in 2009, they have quickly lost senior-level attorneys and support staff. Their business model of hiring low-cost, inexperienced replacement workers has only increased turnover, decreased morale and put an unfair burden on those remaining senior people to pick up the slack and train a never-ending stream of newbies. Despite FQ's above-average fees, the Company is unwilling to pay employees in accordance with their level of knowledge or successes, further fueling the brain drain to other immigration firms.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at FosterQuan

Pros – Some of the employees are great to work with, when morale isn't super low. Office locations are great. Good parking. Great IT support. Some of the partners (Houston) are good people. Training for legal support staff has improved.

Cons – Company lacks quality leadership (they perform at a failure level). Pay used to be good, but now they are starting their support staff at shockingly low wages. The partners have gotten very cheap. Office politics are out of control. Office Managers spin lies to pit employees against each other. The partners care more about profit than client satisfaction. Several senior staff have left in the last year. Most the staff is very unhappy. Taking earned time off is frowned upon. The office climate is frequently referred to by the staff members as "toxic". If you want a job you can feel good about, look elsewhere. If you take this job to get by while you find the next best thing, make sure you don't get sucked in, one year can turn into three and you will be miserable. If you give your two weeks notice, be prepared to get fired.

Advice to Senior Management – Learn how to become non-failing leaders. Stop pitting employees against each other. Just going to church doesn't make you a good person.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend