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Schwartz, Simon, Edelstein, Celso & Kessler, L.L.P. > Reviews

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Florham Park

Firm Culture: Ridiculously high turnover for size of firm (55-60). Most leave from litigation - completely different experiences based on department you're in.
Work & Hours: Hours aren't terrible, but not enough work to meet it (2000).
Salary & Benefits: Salaries are completely arbitrary - based on previous salary.
The Interview process: Not difficult - they're usually looking to hire because someone just quit.
Overall Impression: Good collegiality among associates, most of the counsel and even some partners, but other partners ruin the experience by themselves.

Florham Park

Firm Culture: The place is built on nepotism. As you go up the list from junior associates to partners, the legal talent goes down.
Work & Hours: The billing requirement is a joke, not enough work to meet the requirement but the firm uses it as justification for their joke raises. Does not matter if your work is good or not, just overbill the client and you will be liked.
Salary & Benefits: You would make more collecting recycling in the woods. Salary is concomitant with the economy.
The Interview process: Very easy considering you are more intelligent than the nepotism partners.
Overall Impression: Managing partners look like Joe Camel.

Florham Park

Firm Culture: A completely disfunctional firm. No one at the partner level has a clue. Associates are afraid to do anything because the ability to throw someone under the bus seems to be the only requirement for achieving partner status. The requirement for who gets promoted to the counsel step between associate and partner seems to be based upon hair color.
Work & Hours: impossible 2000 hour billable requirement considering the partners don't provide enough work and generally only bill 1200 hours themselves. There is no professionalism and attorneys are treated like children. For instance, attorneys are required to sign in and out so partners know how to track them down and scream at them.
Salary & Benefits: Don't quit your day job.
The Interview process: Don't walk on the street outside their building or you may get hauled in and offered a job.
Overall Impression: Fantastic place to work.

Florham Park

Firm Culture: Very good. You are starving to death due to a gross underpayment in salary and the partners ask you to contribute charitable donations even after a salary freeze. You do not get reimbursed for your contribution to the Haiti fund or whatever the charity is until you receive your annual bonus, and then you only take a 50% hit on the contribution. YOu will later be asked to give back that bonus for some new charity. When you refuse, the partners will tell you it is not a request but a demand.
Work & Hours: If you need hours the partners will tell you to come see them. When you go see them, they will tell you that are you not working your files properly. When you take a day off so that you can go to the bank to get a loan to save your house from foreclosure, the rotund partner will call and tell you that you are not on the absence calendar. You then tell the self important partner that you had that same problem in second grade and will try and do better. He then grunts after his face is purple, swings his arms like a gorilla and leaves.
Salary & Benefits: At least a priest knows he is taking a vow of poverty before he accepts his job. But enjoy the periodic cheese platters that stink up the place almost as bad the stuttering partner.
The Interview process: You have a better chance of getting denied a job at QuickChek. But, to be fair, you will make more money at QuickChek.
Overall Impression: The firm is like the wine they make. Looks legitimate from the outside, but the content is cheap. We're all in this together.

Florham Park

Firm Culture: The other postings have it right. The people at the top have driven this place into the ground and crushed every associate's spirit in the process.
Work & Hours: Option 1: bust your tail to miraculously achieve the 2000 hour requirement, despite barely having enough work and then getting a morsel of a raise (or no raise at all).
Option 2: don't meet you hours (like 95% percent of your colleagues) and get yelled at and thrown under the bus by the partners who are supposed to give you work but keep it for themselves and then blame you for not doing enough.
Salary & Benefits: Cheap. Cough up the cheese for insurance, too. But don't go further than that. Forget making any other benefits contributions. It'll just cost you in the long run.
The Interview process: Blink? Check.
Breathe? Check.
Polysyllabic words? Wait a second, you may be overqualified.
Overall Impression: Stay away. Going there would be like trying to board the Titanic after it hit the iceberg and started taking on water.

Florham Park

Firm Culture: Fully oppressive. Partners do not know how to talk to anyone. They act like spoiled children and yell and make ridiculous demands. Partners and junior partners are classic example of the Peter Principle, fueled by nepotism.
Work & Hours: Real problem. They do not have enough work to make anyone reach the magic 2000 hour "requirement". They use the 2000 hour requirement against you to not pay you what they agreed to pay you, but they do not have the work to get you to 2000 hours.
Salary & Benefits: Alice in Wonderland-esque. The managing partner(Queeen of Hearts), his daughter(Jabberwock) and the managing partner's best friend (Mad Hatter), are overpaid. Associates and staff are underpaid. Employees pay almnost 100% of their health benefits. They do public sector employment work which makes this all the more outrageous.
The Interview process: Useless. They tell you how great they are, about all of the public sector work they do, and lie to you about how you will be paid.
Overall Impression: Don't work here. This is one of the worst firms out there. They have a tremendously high attorney turnover rate. They are miserable people to work for. They are big supporters of elected officials and then expect public sector work in return.

Florham Park

Firm Culture: Please see memo below. Thank you.

It has been brought to my attention that many employees are concerned because salaries have been frozen for a long period of time. As many of you know, the economy is very poor and getting paid here is a luxury. Therefore you must deal with it. Anyone who has any issues, please see me after I return from an expensive vacation. I encourage everyone to donate to charity in the firm's name while the partners and I are on vacation. This is NOT a suggesstion!
Work & Hours: There has also been some discussion regarding billible hours. I will REPEAT that billible hours of 2000 is not a goal, it is a requirement! We cannot lift the freeze (which we forsee being lifted in 2018) until everyone bills their time. If you do not have work, find some! If you do not bill 2000 we will have to freeze you until 2021.
Salary & Benefits: We are also having a firm retreat one Saturday next month. Attendance is mandatory. It does not count toward your 2000 hour requirement, rather it is your way of demonstrating your appreciation for your job here. If there is a fee for parking at the event, please pay it. We are all making sacrifices in this troubling time. A small lunch will be provided but we suggest that you make arrangements to buy 50/50 tickets at this event and all proceeds (even the winnings) will go to our clients! Anyone having an issue with this mandatory firm event on a Saturday should see me when I get back from vacation or see a partner who has no authority to do anything but scold you.

The Interview process: There is a newly newly formed Morale Committee (which will dissovle shortly after their first meeting) which has been established to look into improving morale. It is none of your business who is on that committee. They are looking into having a monthly pizza party to boost morale. Pizza will cost $9 a head but we will generously lower the price to $7. We prefer cash but will accept a check if necessary. We may also permit everyone at least one lunch per month with the partner in your department. You will be required to brown bag that lunch. It is also not a time for you to ask questions about when the freeze will end, as those questions will not entertained. The Morale Committee will dictate to you what is going to happen. You may not particpate.
Overall Impression: We are also instituting an incentive plan for our non-partner attorneys. If you bring in $500 a month we will like you. If you bring in $1000 a month we will like you more, but there is no financial benefit. If you bring in $5000 you will be swell! More than $10,000 a month and you may wear jeans to work one day.

We are not in a position to give any raises now. In 2018 we hope to give raises of 1.2 percent, which is on par with the inflation rate of camel cash. We are looking forward to the better times ahead, but it does not matter for you. Please be sure to sign out on the sign out sheet so we know that you are not at the welfare office (but please make a donation there if you are so we can get work from them).

Please direct all future inquiries to my attention.

Florham Park

Firm Culture: Horrendous. Associates usually get along well largely because they are banding together against the onslaught of the top partners there who do everything they can to suck the life out of you as an attorney and then lie straight to your face and make it seem like everything is okay.
Some partners are so oppressive it's ridiculous and you feel badly for your comrades who are busting their tails and getting beaten into submission just as you are. They really should create a healing group for the victims. We're all in this together.
Work & Hours: Requirement is 2000, but there is never enough work to meet it. It gets worse when institutional clients leave and everyone looks around like they don't know what to do. Should be a 30 attorney firm with the amount of work they have. It's particularly laughable when counsel ask associates if they have work to give...yet these same people are promoted while associates continue to be driven into the ground. But do not ever leave the office before 6 without signing out on the 'absence calendar' lest you incur the wrath of purple-faced lunatic pacing the halls, checking offices and grunting loudly.
Salary & Benefits: Not sure it can be put into words. Salary is arbitrary and painfully low, you practically need a second job which, of course, you are forbidden from doing. A salary freeze for two years when you are already badly paid is a death sentence. Though you may get a generous $1500 bonus in February, which is actually paid in installments over the Spring while they wait for you to quit so they can save the $750 for an important trip to see a football game. Benefits are no better.
The Interview process: A complete facade. They will talk to you nicely, tell you how great everyone is and how great the Firm is. As long as you can articulate a coherent thought, you're pretty well set. Then comes your first day...or maybe you get by your first couple of days before some self-righteous arrogant partner begins berating you for having too many paper clips in your drawer or using the wrong color highlighter or something just as meaningful to your legal work as an attorney. Seriously, think twice before you agree to an interview or else they might actually hire you and misspell your name on the e-mail introducing you to your new colleagues aka fellow soul-sucked-out-of-them friends.
Overall Impression: A head-spinning, stomach-turning operation. Nothing they do makes any bit of sense, unless it means more money in the managing partner's pockets...and, yes, he does look like Joe Camel. The highest ups do nothing unless it helps them and them only. They do not care about you unless you bill like a madman and make them money. They will return the favor by letting you keep your wonderful job and by screaming you at some more.

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