Ambitious mission, awful reality, arrogant leadership
Pros
The people. Most are a joy to work with and they’ll be a huge support system when you decide to leave. Everyone from the care center to corporate is jumping ship, and many people are helping one another make a run for it. It’s been working because you can’t go a week without several people putting in their notice.
Cons
If you came to LegalZoom for the mission, it will kill your soul a little to work here. The company looks like it’s trying to do good and it mostly is. But when you start asking questions, you’re gonna see a lot of questionable or outright deceptive business strategies. That’s because the company’s appetite for democratizing law usually stops when it jeopardizes revenue. This was how it was in the past but the difference is old execs owned it. The new team keeps saying they’re all about transparency when they’re far from it. So if you came here to be the good guy and make legal services more accessible, just know you’ll need to compromise if you want to keep your paycheck. Many leaders are brilliant jerks. They look good on paper but are two faced. They’re charming for larger group meeting and condescending in smaller settings. They’re spin masters. Layoffs = growth opportunities. Pandemic pay cuts to front-line workers = raises. Shady business practices = over… except ask anyone from sales and that’s false. The business strategy is to rip off Intuit. Nothing wrong with being inspired by other companies. But copying another company’s entire product and business playbook isn’t the same thing. It’s pretty demoralizing because many leadership positions have been filled with ex-Intuit employees who know how to replicate that company’s strategy so it doesn’t feel like there’s room for other voices. The company is trying to focus on diversity, inclusion, and allyship this year… and has made a lot of progress because the previous bar was so incredibly low. But if you talk to BIPOC coworkers, many feel it’s performative especially when this company was quick to stand behind everything on social media for recruitment but slow to actually do anything during the pandemic. These coworkers are happy to celebrate the small wins on Slack, but talk to them privately and their interactions with leadership (when the meeting isn’t recorded) don’t leave them hopeful. LegalZoom’s motto should be execs first, unoriginal, profits driven, and unnecessarily complicated.