Toxic work environment, zero work-life balance, terrible management
Pros
If you are an Associate, the other Associates are pleasant to work with. Most of the Associates are genuine and will share or bounce ideas off of each other. When I worked here, this was the part I enjoyed the most. Most people below management level are great to work with and will not give you any problems. There is great diversity in the office and there is a focus on diversity and inclusion within the organization. Most of the support staff are young, and so are the Associates. Fragomen tends to hire those with very little experience (entry level). The benefits were standard, but not bad. One final pro is that I was able to get out and find a new job.
Cons
This is my opinion honest opinion of the Toronto office and I've waited a while to share my experience for fear of retribution. I remember being in a meeting with some senior HR people from head office in the US. In that meeting, a senior HR person said that "Fragomen operates thin". They meant what they said and that sums up what my experience was like at the Toronto office. As an Associate you are responsible for file work, the management of files, management of caseworker workloads and file distribution, clients and a whole plethora of other things. The amount of work you do does not justify the amount of money they pay you. Office HR will always say that salaries are market, but nothing could be further from the truth. Fragomen pays far below market and expects you to work anywhere from 50-60 hours a week consistently. Long hours are common and so is work on the weekends. Expect to work a lot and expect to get burned out very fast. Associates are really an afterthought at the Toronto office, the focus is always on support staff, caseworkers and management. The Associate group is the most ignored group within the office. They have no voice, no praise, no life, no happiness, no pay and no choice. I never met a happy Associate in the office, most are depressed, overworked, or looking for a new job. The turnover is horrendous, most Associates only last about 1-2 years, as I did. The ones that stay beyond 2 years have no soul, no life, no options, or are too busy with the work they give them that they don't have time to escape the hell that is the Toronto office. Managers will dangle the carrot in front of you and tell you what you want to hear but it never happens. Empty promises are common so don't believe what they tell you. There are very limited opportunities to grow with the Toronto office, this is mostly due to the managing partner not having his ear to the ground and operating in a parallel universe. Since the managing partner rarely does any kind of actual file work and does not take any kind of opinion from anyone actually working on files, all of his decisions are based on secondhand information passed up by managers that are cozy to him. This creates a huge problem since the information he receives is usually unreliable and only coming from someone seeking a promotion and telling him what he wants to hear. Whenever there was a problem (escalation in Frag lingo) there would be an overreaction and a resulting change in process that would affect the entire office. There were two partners in the office when I worked there and now there is only one. I wish the associates luck as I'm certain the office is probably more toxic than ever having only a single partner (I recently spoke to some former colleagues that still work at the office and they said that things are getting worse). The managers are a horrible group of people. Their only interest is to create drama so that they can elevate themselves and make other managers or teams look bad. Most are serial brown-nosers and will do anything to please the partners. The managers will tell you that they care about you and are worried about you, but the only care they have is meeting their billing target so that they can get a minuscule bonus at the end of the month. There were only 2 managers that were genuine, everyone else was a bootlicker ready to do the bidding of the partners. The managers also do nothing, most will send emails or handle escalations. A few managers would do file work but the general consensus of the Associate group was that the managers were lazy and would push off as many tasks as possible onto their Associates. Managers don't take ownership of anything unless it serves their career goals. Rarely was credit given when it was due, and some managers would steal your idea and take credit for it for their own benefit. Training is minimal at best, they use the sink or swim method. If you can't learn the material yourself, you sink and you're out. If you can manage to learn the law then expect to be loaded with files after 2-4 weeks. If you have a HR problem in the office, you should have no expectation that it will be resolved. You should just quit because the HR is not able to resolve anything or they will find a reason to fire you so there is no issue to resolve. The HR function at the office doesn't work, I've seen the frustration that other Associates had to go through and it's not worth the fight. On the compensation front, there are no raises based on merit, and no bonuses for Associates. Raises are given in a pseudo-communist fashion meaning that you could've been the biggest revenue generating Associate in the office with the cleanest record and still get the same raise as an Associate that didn't work as hard as you or made several mistakes. If you ever make a mistake, the office will never let you get any sleep about it and they will constantly remind you of the mistake you made no matter how long ago it occurred. While all of this a terrible review for Fragomen, there's a lot more. The SLA's are ridiculous, and the fees charged to clients are extremely low. Clients will push you around all of the time, escalate you, and expect rolls-royce service on a toyota budget. This results in the quality of work being extremely poor. The partners on a global basis will complain that they don't have enough money, but if they looked at what they were charging their clients then it should become abundantly clear what the source of that frustration is. You cannot blame your teams for budgetary shortfalls when the true source of the problem are the ludicrously low fees charged to clients. The final comment I wanted to make is about the Associate Development Program, known as the ADP program at the office. The ADP is one of the worst career development programs I've seen in a long time. Instead of respecting you as a professional, the office treats you like a child that needs to be taught and assigned homework which is eventually graded. Be prepared to be treated like an articling student because that is the origin of the program as the one that conjured up the program based it on the articling program from another firm. The real purpose of ADP is to create a juvenile skit at the end of the year to be presented at an office potluck. I can say with full confidence that no one wanted to be a part of this program, nor did they want to participate in a skit at the end of the year. In sum, the Canada office of Fragomen was one of the most toxic work environments that I've ever worked at. Everything is reactionary and management is aloof with their own career and personal goals that there is no focus on you. I wouldn't recommend working at this place, even to my worst enemies.
