Pros
If you are looking to excel as an attorney, get hands-on experience and training, and to be given the opportunity to be the best attorney you can and want to be, then SLG is the place for you. I have been with SLG for many years now and I can say with great confidence that this place is a rare gem, especially for a law firm. Anyone familiar with the legal industry knows how soul-crushing, stressful, and cut-throat it can be, and a lot of that is attributable to law firms focusing on the wrong things — billable hours, mindless, cookie-cutter lawyering, and requiring associates to sell their soul at the expense of their personal lives. At SLG, you will get the opportunity to work on a wide-range of complex and mentally stimulating cases; you will learn how to think outside the box and be a well-rounded business and corporate attorney; you will go head-to-head with the best firms out there, due to the high caliber of the firm and its attorneys; you will be assessed and given opportunities based on your merits and dedication versus the number of years under your belt; and you will get hands-on training and mentoring on how to build your book of business and thrive in this industry. This is all while having a well-balanced personal life. To me, it really does not get better than that and does sound too good to be true. The experience aside, the firm motto is centered around the fact that its employees are people first and legal professionals second. As a result, there is a strong focus on the fact that working hard does not mean killing ourselves in the process and risking burn out, which is a very, very real thing in the legal profession. More so, management works very hard to make sure SLG is a place people enjoy working and I can genuinely say I enjoy waking up every morning and coming to work, and also love spending time with my colleagues outside of work during our regular happy hours and firm events.
Cons
No major “cons” per se. If you’re looking for big law salary (and are ok with working double the hours), this is not the place for you. SLG is a boutique law firm and while steadily growing, it’s intentionally not big law. Rather, what you will learn and be given the opportunity to do here is build your own book of business with your own clients, which not only provides another bucket of income but the autonomy to run your career the way you want. In full transparency, there was a brief, rough stretch some years back, which I suspect is what some of the bad reviews here are referring to. However, anyone who has been with the firm long enough knows the source for that rough stretch is no longer present at the firm. So, it’s unfortunate that the firm’s ratings continue to be impacted by a non-existent concern.