Sweat shop vibes - Anonymous employee Duncan Lewis Solicitors Employee Review

This is a real review from someone who has actually worked at DL. I can guarantee that all the "good" reviews below are fake. If you are actually interested in working here then please ensure you read the bad reviews because they are an accurate representation of what it is like to work at DL. Firstly, you are paid appallingly. £17,000 for a trainee solicitor in London. Low salaries are expected when working in legal aid, but perhaps make up for it with benefits i.e. more than 20 days holiday, sick pay or even more than minimum required pension contribution. You will be constantly harassed about targets. You are told to put billing before anything else. There is no admin staff to assist you and no training provided, so you are expected to do this on top of your fee earning work. You will be treated like a robot. You are constantly given more and more clients even if you are already bursting at the seams with clients. The emphasis is on how many clients you have and not on the quality of work you are providing to the clients. I am aware of unqualified staff receiving complaints due to lack of training or mistakes due to being overworked and all the blame falls on them. There is no emphasis on client care at all, but as soon as you mess up due to being overworked or if you don't have time to bill files due the immense work pressure, you will be out on your ear. DL treat the place like a sweat shop and NOT a law firm. They specialise in human rights, but can't even treat their employees right. You are expected, even as unqualified staff, to meet your high targets every month by whatever means necessary. As a caseworker or trainee you are expected to meet the same targets as qualified staff. You can't do a varied training contract. For example you won't be able to do a seat in childcare and immigration - you will do seats in childcare and family or immigration and human rights. You will be doing the same work throughout your whole training contract which will basically be whatever can make the firm the most money, not what you want to train in. I believe the reason behind this is to save money on training and to prevent you from receiving full training with the hope that you'll qualify and stay on with them on their £24k NQ salary. I don't know many trainees who have qualified and stayed at DL, but now due to the change in training contracts and unvaried seats, people may have no other choice. The supervisors supervise up to 6 non-qualified staff each and don't have enough time to train you. There is basically no supervision provided. You work all the hours under the sun to meet the targets and to prevent complaints against you from having a ridiculously high target. You only get 20 days holiday and no sick pay. If you are unwell, unlucky. You often work 12 hour days to meet targets (you will be threatened with the sack if you don't meet targets) which in turn means that your salary will fall below minimum wage for the hours you work. Most caseworkers/trainees I worked with were on a salary of £17,000 - £20,000 and often worked 50+ hours per week. To put this into perspective, if you are earning £17k and do 50 hours per week, you will be earning £6.54 per hour (min wage is £7.50). DL exploits young aspiring lawyers. You end up leaving work every day feeling demoralised and undervalued. The legal world is stressful and you will always feel pressured, but you should never feel this way. And if you do, at least most lawyers can afford to do things outside of work.