Pros
Overall assessment - Fragomen Chicago is a decent first job and a good place to get experience. However, there are other firms that compensate better, provide better benefits, and offer more interesting work. If you manage to hit Paralegal at this office, start looking for a new job since many more prestigious firms offer a 10k bump in salary and you will do less work. Nice office and growing firm - basic perks that one can expect in a larger corporate office such as a stocked fridge with drinks and free coffee. Fragomen moved into their current office a few years back so the office furniture is new and some desks have standing features. Almost all are equipped with dual-monitors. The Chicago office recently expanded to an additional floor too, so if you manage to land a permanent position, no lay-offs are likely for the foreseeable future. Diversity - relatively diverse for a law firm and there is high percentage of minorities and women. However, positions of power in the Chicago office are still dominated almost entirely by Caucasian men/women. Benefits - PTO is generous and the base amount is 21 days. However, this includes all sick days/personal days. Employees gain an additional 5 days of PTO after 5 years of service and an additional 5 days on top of that after 5 more years of service. 401(k) match is 20% but this only applies for employees that stay for at least 5 years. Fragomen only partially matches (about 2-4%) after 2 years of service. Health insurance is only so-so but better than most companies. Work – depending on the team you land on, you really feel like you are making a difference in the clients’ lives since Fragomen is helping them gain working visas, green cards, and US citizenship. There are also pro-bono clinics where employees can work on asylum cases, although these are held only once per year.
Cons
Pay – the starting salary for temps is $12 an hour which is similar to what one could make at a fast-food restaurant. If you manage to land a permanent position at the firm, your starting salary will be around $32,000 which is a livable wage but nothing extravagant. Importantly, at later levels for support staff, Fragomen’s salaries drop off in comparison to other firms. Fragomen Chicago’s employment model is not focused on employee retention. As such, the firm does not compensate nor promote employees at an adequate rate to prevent top talent from moving onto more prestigious and better paying jobs. Management – this office has an opaque management structure where managing partners often make decisions that seem high-handed and out of touch with the views of lower level associates and support staff. Moreover, associates and even team leads often display a lack of awareness about new policies or decisions made at the top and this has an effect on team morale. For example, management decided to cancel one of the main work events of the year in 2018 and no explanation was ever announced. In addition, although quite some time ago, management removed year-end bonuses for support staff. Management at Fragomen Chicago views its staff as mere cogs in a vast machine and they do not proactively tackle issues unless there is a threat towards internal billing targets or to the firm’s outside reputation. HR – this office’s HR is actually based in a different Fragomen office and only comes to the Chicago office a few times a month. Therefore, there is really no one that an employee can go to for any type of urgent confidential issue since the vast majority of communication with this HR must be conducted via e-mail or telephone. An office with over 100 employees should have an HR professional on-site full time. Work – although previously stated as a pro, the work at Fragomen can also be considered a con. Immigration law is relatively monotonous and there is a low level of skill involved – hence Fragomen Chicago’s lack of focus on employee retention. Most employees will be tasked with filling out administrative forms repeatedly week after week or responding to foreign national’s basic and tiresome requests for their application’s receipt number. There are some chances to do interesting work, but since immigration law is administrative in nature, the vast majority of time is spent doing basic paperwork. It takes just one look at the faces of employees who have been at the firm for years to realize that the work is generally unfulfilling.