Pros
Access to latest technology and equipment is decent and about on par with other law firms. There are opportunities to telecommute if you are based in the Melville office. Access to training and industry conferences is generally good depending on what team you are with.
Cons
INEPT is a good all around word. At the time I left, IT was basically being dictated to by the Partnership. So what you have are non-technical people making technical decisions and driving technology for the company. It's a disastrous formula. Once upon a time, Shearman was cutting edge with technology. But then they slowly descended into bleeding edge technology. The IT Management is inept at best. Few of the managers are on the same page and therefore the teams are not on the same page. There is a lot of inter-team animosity and it's the end users that suffer for the lack of sync. The help desk is one of the worst I've ever encountered since it was outsourced to a truly inept company that seems to place more value with number of tickets closed than quality of work performed for the caller. Granted, users are babied in the firm and a good percentage of the calls to the help desk could be eliminated by users going to training. The Desktop Support team is normally a tight team, but they have so much to learn in terms of taking initiative to solving problems by themselves instead of needlessly escalating to 3rd level. Just like the Help Desk, they too ask the same questions over and over no matter how many times the answer has been given and even documented for them. 3rd level support is disjointed at best. Not many teams work well together. There is a lot of dead weight in 3rd level support. Many people who've been there a while should be fired for the good of the department and company. But with a management team that lacks a backbone to stand up to the partnership, they will continue to keep the dead weight on as their best and brightest leave to other law firms and opportunities. Compensation is low compared to other law firms, and bonuses and raises are pretty much non existent. There are very few that shine in the IT department.