Sidley Austin reviews

The work culture in HR, IT, and Accounting was very poor. A LOT of working hours with no regard to work-life balance. Over the last 18 months, when positions became vacant (voluntarily or involuntarily), it was very hard to get them approved to replace the role. The hiring freeze made it extremely challenging to do our jobs effectively. There is also a very strong "bully" culture. Sidley likes to call it "being direct," but directors especially throw their weight and titles around and demand results without negotiating priorities or discussing the request. The organization took a big step towards addressing wellness by creating a new Wellness Director position and hiring it quickly when a notable Partner had committed suicide which was a pretty large news story. While I believe the firm had the best intentions, this position and the wellness efforts have almost exclusively focused on the lawyer side. Nobody is looking at the toll the work culture and attitudes are taking on other support staff besides legal secretaries. I regularly worked 50-60 hours per week, questioned why deadlines were being missed, and when I told leadership we were overwhelmed and needed help I was told to "figure it out." Many people on my team regularly did not eat lunch and worked in the evenings to try to keep up with the work. This was not a safe work environment or an employee-friendly culture. Management is now far more focused on people coming back into the office and commuting than the work product being delivered, and losing 1-2 hours each day to commuting is frowned upon during performance evaluations. There is a clear lack of leadership, lack of support, and because of the notoriety of the firm name and status as a top global law firm this bully culture is tolerated. Not all teams have the same work culture, so before you use this as a reason not to work at Sidley you should definitely ask a lot of questions and get a good feel for whether you can truly handle that work environment. Sidley will tell you "it's the same everywhere" or "that's just the legal profession" but that has not been my experience.

But if you care about more than people being nice, the culture is absolutely trash. IT is an absolute disaster, trying desperately to appease lawyers at the expense of staff support. Staff is generally invisible to the organization. People look at me like I'm an insane person for protecting my work/life balance. On top of that, there was a bait-and-switch regarding working remote during the hiring process. After I'd accepted and given notice at my old job, I found out it was hybrid instead of remote as I had previously discussed. Nobody respects meeting times or calendars, and things constantly run long or get scheduled outside of work hours. I've only been here a few months and I'm fully back on the job search because of this miserable experience. What a nightmare.