Shearman & Sterling Reviews

Pros

White shoe firm with good reputation
Very nice employees

Cons

Very long hours and sometimes one does not really understand why

Pros

Good pay and nice colleagues.

Cons

Disorganised senior management, lack of support

Pros

good people, and good experience. this is a job to get right out of college to prepare for grad school or another career

Cons

tough hours, sometimes tough attorneys to work for. Salary is ok for the job. Sometimes you end up dealing with menial tasks

Advice to Senior Management

No real advice. The legal assistant program is run pretty well and I think it sort of runs on its own.

Pros

A decent place for recent grads to start career.
Firm carries some name recognition.

Cons

Management promises the world and expects you to sacrifice all to make it happen.
Long hours with little regard for your personal life.
Bonuses are small compared to similar work in other industries.

Advice to Senior Management

There's sometimes more than one way to accomplish an assignment.

Pros

Pay was great. The people there are quite capable. The attorneys really know what they're doing and they sometimes have time to help.

Cons

The hours are long. I was looking at 9:30-9 on a consistent basis, and often til 12 or 2. Expect 12 hour days to be a given. Weekends, kiss goodbye.

Advice to Senior Management

Partners want their profit. You're expendable. You'll pick that up immediately. You're made to feel like the only valid feeling is grateful you have a job. This in turn justifies the hours. I'd happily take a hit in pay if it meant less hours.

Pros

The compensation was good. The deals were pretty high-profile. The co-workers were all very talented and friendly. The culture of the firm was very easy-going and relatively cohesive.

Cons

There wasn't much room for growth. Working in the position I did, it wasn't easy to increase my responsibilities or to really get a feel for what's going on inside the firm.

Advice to Senior Management

It would be nice if the employees had a better sense of where the firm's office is heading overall. It's easy to feel like you are not a stakeholder in the company at all.

Pros

Top Pay
Good Quality Work
Prestige- they think they are more important than they are, but they still get top work
Smart People

Cons

No culture of niceness or mentoring
Generally fairly cheap compared to other law firms (no real holiday party, crap food at events)
Huge cutbacks to summer associate program

Advice to Senior Management

Try to actually develop your associates through mentoring and teaching. Associates shouldn't be teaching themselves how to do deals. If you're too busy to work with them, senior associates should be assigned to those deals.

Pros

Partners treat associates with respect, which makes for a good working environment.
Work is interesting and challenging.
Pay is good.

Cons

The hours are very long.
There are limited opportunities to make partner.
There is a lot of uncertainty in law firms today.

Advice to Senior Management

Make sure we survive.

Pros

Extremely bright, ethical attorneys. Not as stodgey as one might assume.

Cons

Lawyers are generally not good managers, but the S&S culture makes it even worse. During the economic down-turn, S&S laid off a number of associates for "performance based" reasons, when the primary cause was clearly the firm's bottom line. The same thing happened in 2001.

Advice to Senior Management

Be honest with your employees.

Pros

Shearman and Sterling is a great place to work just out of college as a paralegal. You'll learn the ropes of a law firm and then can decide whether it's a suitable career path for you.

Cons

As a paralegal you work long hours, in a highly stressful environment, and often do not receive recognition for hard work.

Advice to Senior Management

Help associates and in turn the legal assistants maintain a better work/life balance. Also, appreciation and recognition for good work is key to creating good morale - even among the paralegals.