Charles River Associates reviews

Work is very feast or famine. Lot of pressure to never make a mistake because it could really hurt a case your working on.

CRA, however, gives its analysts and associates menial work such as reading depositions and case documents for months on end. This wouldn't be quite as bad if the work weren't advertised very differently during recruiting. CRA advertises that it encourages (and expects) analysts and associates to do substantial econometric modeling and data work in support of its cases. Very little of this was realized for me. I entered CRA with 3 years of professional programming and econometric experience and performed minimal econometrics and little programming during my tenure. CRA's upper management, at least in my office, consistently mismanaged projects and the time of junior staff. No matter the attempts at planning, our projects were persistently understaffed and behind schedule. However, with fixed (frequently court-imposed) deadlines, this makes for a deadly combination. The VPs, Consultants, etc. would still be affected by this mismanagement, but analysts and associates felt the impact more acutely. For a large firm with multiple offices and multiple practices, there is a surprising absence of cooperation across offices and practices. While there is some cross-office/practice work, the firm does not utilize available staff very well.