Sullivan & Cromwell Reviews

Pros

Prestigious, company outings are awesome, benefits are great

Cons

Management sucks! you're ONLY recognized for the negative portions of your work! the positive portion of your work goes UNOTICED!

Advice to Senior Management

Learn how to treat and recognize your employees' hard work better! instead of constantly focusing on the negativitiy

Pros

The only good thing about working at this firm is the money. You do get compensated for unfair and rude treatment ... I will say that much.

Cons

If I was younger, I most definitely would find another job where my skills (top notch) would be appreciated (never happens here ... it is expected and then some) and where I would be treated kindly and professionally. That just doesn't happen here.

Advice to Senior Management

Time to make the partners treat the support staff professionally.

Pros

high-quality work ;
efficient and professional ;
few politics ;
good name and reputation ;
project-oriented;
high-profile clients ;
significant transactions

Cons

no work-life balance ;
no advancement for persons without NY Bar ;
cold fellowship among colleagues ;
hardship upon junior people .

Advice to Senior Management

More communications and retreats to hard-working people, no matter what level he or she is; people of higher level show more respect to people of lower levels

Pros

Overtime availability, you get a car home after overtime, cheap food at the cafeteria, social events are appealing.

Cons

No benefits as a temp, incompetent and manipulative supervisors, mind numbing work, office chatter and gossip is high, place is filled with miserable people working for a paycheck.

Advice to Senior Management

Please observe closely the abusive and downright fraudulent behavior from supervisors, attorney, and legal staff employees. They sure know how to milk the system of billing for work never performed.

Pros

- Training
- Name recognition
- Prestige
- Compensation

Cons

- High compensation still not enough to make up for lack of private life
- Long, longer, longest hours that are unpredictable
- Little chance of making partner
- Foreign office experience provides few opportunities to move in-house

Advice to Senior Management

- Talk to associates like grown-ups
- Bring back decent bonuses
- Cut back on hours

Pros

Great compensation, surrounded by smart people, reasonable work environment. They really know how to take care of their employees, and demand a lot of them for it. The environment is conducive to working well and working with others.

Cons

Long days, long hours and hard work. Often working on weekends, and spent a lot of time working at home. The only con is the work/life balance. To be fair, good compensation package with ample vacation time that is generally flexible .

Advice to Senior Management

Here I really don't have much, you know what you are getting into here and there are few surprises. Few people are in it for the long haul and those that are receive different treatment.

Pros

given lots of autonomy and responsibility; made lead attorney early in your career. Pay is very competitive. Work with very accomplished attorneys

Cons

The hours are to say the least extremely long and the work is very complicated and the staff is difficult to deal with and not a great location.

Advice to Senior Management

Make attorneys partner at a younger age and give more incentives and greater bonuses and more feedback and stuff like that.

Pros

-- Smart colleagues
-- Prestigious reputation
-- Front-page WSJ-type work
-- Good cafeteria
-- Good gym
-- Nice offices
-- Good support staff

Cons

-- Terrible work-life balance
-- Much work on evenings & weekends
-- Stressful work
-- Poor partner-associate relations
-- Loooong hours

Advice to Senior Management

-- Pay more attention to work-life balance
-- Penalize partners who are verbally abusive
-- Reward partners who foster positive partner-associate relations

Pros

Perhaps the primary reason to work for Sullivan & Cromwell LLP is because you have the opportunity to work on extremely significant legal matters. Over the course of my two year tenure with the firm, I worked on two "bet the firm" matters and the exposure was certainly not lost on me. Partners are smart, although a bit arrogant at times and associates are driven, sometimes a bit too much. Base pay is competitive and opportunities for overtime are rife. Additionally, benefits and parks aren't too shabby; when I was at the firm, black cars and SeamlessWeb were de facto.

Cons

In my position, the work could be extremely tedious, repetitive, and boring. Because the structure of the firm is extremely hierarchical, there is limited opportunity for someone at the lower rungs to make a difference. Furthermore, I experienced episodes in which my superiors were extremely disrespectful to me. Much of what associates do is project management, and not actually practicing law, yet few have any experience with managing people and tasks. Work/life balance is somewhat absence as you are expected to be on call 24/7. WIth the exception of those who actually think they can make partner, I found that many associates were miserable, making my job all the more difficult.

Advice to Senior Management

First, I would advise senior management to provide attorneys at all levels with project management training. At the end of the day, much of what occurs is the management of projects and not the practice of law. I would also encourage the firm to institute 360 degree reviews. Many of the firm's clients use these types of reviews and I believe that they would significantly aid employees by recognizing their strengths and identifying their weaknesses. Additionally, I would clarify the decision making process as it pertains to some of the newly created departments. Many times, we would not know who to turn to for various tasks and that made our job frustrating.

Pros

It's a great stepping stone if you are support staff (legal assistant). It looks great on your resume, you can get knowledge that transfers to other jobs, and you have the ability to make much more than your base salary due to overtime. I would not recommend this for someone looking for a career. But if you are just out of college or you are looking to gain experience for a few years, it's a great opportunity. People look twice when this law firm is on your resume.

Cons

Management sometimes does not communicate new policies thoroughly. Often times you do not realize a policy has changed until you've done something incorrectly and it's brought to your attention. There is a rigid hierarchy and legal assistants are at the bottom. Your opinion on policies and other aspects of the law firm are not taken into consideration.

Advice to Senior Management

It would be very helpful to have regular meetings to discuss in full any policy changes. It would also be helpful and good for morale if the legal assistants felt that their opinions and voices are heard. While it is understood that we are usually expected to have a high turn-over, it would be nice not to feel that for that reason, our opinion is irrelevant. Also, upward reviews would be very helpful (where we review the associates we work with) for us as well as the associates.