The toilet firms were quite successful last week in closing down JDjive and keeping their reputations of horrible young attorney treatment off the google cache. Luckily, I saved some of the more memorable postings:
Leahey & Johnson is a horrible place run by horrible people. Junior is as nasty as they come & lacks 1% of the old man's talent.If you go there for a deposition, you cannot use their toilet. They are disgusting people - & they churn the crap out of there files. By the way, get ready to wear a suit on Saturdays if you work there. No - I never worked there, but I'm beyond the associate ranks & know many who have. I dealt with those creeps on many cases over the years too.
Melli, Guerin, & Wall. A "firm" that is generally ranked in the Top 5 listing of NYC toilet firms to work at every time such a thread comes up. Salary is 45K for a 50 hour week doing dead-end no fault defense. You cut and paste frivilous boilerplate toilet motions together and argue them at the homeless shelter known as NYC Civil Court. Also very poor health insurance and no bonus. This place goes thru about 3 lawyers a month.
Doc. review at Paul Weiss. $21 an hour to be locked in a windowless basement full of dead cockroaches with the fire exits blocked and ONE bathroom for 65 people (that we also shared with the homeless people who live in the concourse below Rockefeller Center) all for 80 hours a week.
An earlier post and probably others have suggested the Raymond Schwartzberg & Associates is probably one of the worst firms to work at in NYC. This is what I've gathered so far... 1. He pays $30-35K to start (like he has for the past 10 years) and bonuses and raises are few and far between. 2.He expects 80-hour work weeks. 3.His office is a real dump. 4.He does medical malpractice and personal injury law. 5.Turnover at his offices is extremely high. 6.What little support staff he has are incompetent.
I worked at Schwartzberg's office for about 6 weeks. Awful, Awful place. Ray is a huge dick all the time, the lawyers there are REALLY bad, the place is a dump, Ray treats the clients and his employees like @#$%&, no benefits, low pay ($16 an hour. They pretend its salary when you apply, but really it is $16 an hour),and long hours. I had read these posts before I started, but I was desperate and who knows who's posting these things, I thought that maybe everybody here was a spoiled jerk (like most law students) who expected too much from their first job. I wanted to make it work and just put up with some bullshit, but i'd rather forget about the law and go back to delivering pizza than ever work for that @#$%& ever again! Seriously, its bad. Not just bad, but the kind of bad where you spend your nights dreaming of murdering your boss. The only way I would ever go back there is if my only other option was homelessness.
Melli might give Frieberg & Peck a run for their money re: most hated firm. The routine is pretty much the same at both, although Melli actually has the nerve to require real billible hours for no-fault toilet work. Melli pays only 45 K and has a couple computers from 1989.There is NO CASE MGMT SYSTEM! NONE! Everything is in two-pring paper files like it was 1955. Also the partners who run Melli are born liars, they exaggerate the job and lie about new computers, bigger space, etc.
Advertised job for $21k at 50 hours per week. $8.40 an hour. Wal-mart employees make an average of $9.26 an hour. It's only a matter of time before insurance carriers and ID firms catch on. How will it play out? Anemic bonuses. Salary stagnation. Entry level salary DROPS. Higher requirements in terms of hours worked, subservience, etc.
Rappaport Hertz, a real estate firm in Forest Hills, Queens, NY. There was an article in Law.com a few months ago that discussed several EEOC complaints brought by former employees about sexual harrassment and abuse. It is alleged that they put semen on some new JD's phone. http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1124269512308
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24 comments:
Does anyone know what happened to Sean Curtin at DeNovo? The secretary said he no longer works there.
I worked at Freiberg and Peck as my first job. CRAP FIRM!!!!!!!!! Not only are they @ssholes but require billables in the form of points. The poor lawyers who work there are either suckups or beaten down they are willing to keep working there vs temping. The paralegals were actually nice as opposed Freiberg who just sucks as a person.
Good work, Tom, keeping some of the old toilet threads alive. With the recent spate of toilet-firm censorship, JdJive had basically outlived its usefulness as a message board. But it's sad that many potential toilet victims now have no place to get info on these dumps. Xoxo is a worthless thread full of T-2 one L's and undergrad kids pretending they got in to Yale. Oh well. Best bet is just to give up on law altoghther and find another job. Law has nothing going for it, it is a miserable, dead-end paper churning job that accomplishes nothing.
is the Jizz firm still in business?
I worked at freiberg for some time. The worst part of that place is that for a young attorney, not only do you not learn the law, the invite you to not follow any rules. Making motions to compel the day after you notice a deposition? Come on. The place is crap. Forget the point system.....but there was a quota. Place is a joke and should be shut down.
Moo?
I worked there as a secretary and the treatment for secretaries is just as bad. I am glad I left and moved on. It is a great place to start and get some experience, however, attorneys and secretaries alike would be best to GET OUT.
I worked at Freiberg and Peck for several years and I never have understood the negativity on these posts. I think it stems from one or two disgrunted employees. At Freiberg & Peck, I was always treated fair. The salary was not any different from any other ID firms, but I also got 4 weeks vacation, health benefits and 401(k). Say what you will but my experience at Freiberg & Peck was positive.
I was an associate at Freiberg and Peck for a period in 2007. The 2 partners are the epitome of what is wrong with the profession--they are nice to you when you interview and start, but they undercut you at every possible chance, they are greedy, and they don't care about doing a good job or treating their people well. You will make a starting salary in the low or mid $40's range. The health benefits are shitty and at any rate theyre deducted out of your paycheck, so its hard to see what the benefit really is. If you are married, you'll end up using your spouse's insurance. The work is bogus car accident crap--no cases worth more than a few thousand. Most people do not last more than a few months and most people are looking to move up after they've been there even just two weeks.
The post above is misleading and, honestly, its likely that Craig or David (the partners) posted it. No associates stay at Freiberg and Peck for "a few years"--a long time there is like 9 months or 1 year. New people are constantly coming in. As for the salary, notice how they didnt mention what the salary is... in honesty, LOTS of insurance defense firms pay more than $42k or $45k. Freiberg and Peck pays the same as New Jersey auto insurance firms... think about it. If you can get any other job, you will end up taking it. That said, if you have to suck it up and work at Freiberg for a while, you'll soon find out the truth anyway.
freiberg and peck is a place to go only if you've searched a few months and can't get anything. i dont have any good advice on how to survive if you end up there--as others have said, they treat everyone bad, not just the associates. billing is via a point system and the client is Progressive Auto Insurance. your job is to deny medical bills associated with car accidents. even if you believe the bills are too high or the people are lying, its still pretty depressing. and ya, no one stays very long
I have worked at Freiberg and Peck for the last year and a half and I have in the past read some comments that didn't seem true, based upon my experience here, which has been positive. But after reading these posts I know that they are just made up flames. The poster who wrote about working in 2007 has made it all up. Only two attorneys left the firm in 2007, one was Deak who we were glad to see go and the other is a friend of mine who didn't write the comment. Further I started as a recent grad who had just taken the Bar and I made $50,000. No one here makes in the $40's. I got a raise to $60k after one year. They pay 85% of health benefits and I get over 4 weeks off plus half day fridays in the summer from Memorial to Labor Day. It is not the most glamorous work, but I am out by 6-6:30 and never work on the weekend. In my opinion Freiberg & Peck is a good place to work and infinitely better than most of the firms my friends work at.
It's hard to believe anyone stays at F&P for more than 6-9 months. You've really been there that long? Are you a bad interviewer? Everyone at F&P is constantly looking to move to a real job (not involving auto insurance defense) and interviewing.
Are you really looking to do car accident stuff--when you need to make a real income and buy a house/raise a family/having a meaningful career the longer you stay at a place like that the harder it will be to move on. Do you realize what it looks like to tell a real firm that you did No Fault auto cut/paste work for a serious chunk of time?
Is this the same firm? http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=freiberg+peckne.php?term=freiberg+peck
Thank you for this blog... it's always good to know I'm not alone with my frustration about the way some of these small law firms act.
I worked at Freiberg & Peck during my first year out of law school. I couldn't agree more with much of what I see here. When you interview for the job, they try to tell you you'll be litigating and they don't tell you what the work really is. Obviously, they're a firm that does No Fault. For those of you out there, saying what is No Fault--it is automobile insurance cases where you try to deny benefits for medical services performed. So, if you interview at Freiberg & Peck, you should be expecting to handle auto insurance cases for Progressive Insurance and make about 45k to start. Freiberg and Peck don't care about mentoring you and they really don't care if you sink or swim. There are new attorneys and paralegals coming and going all the time.
Though I'm not an attorney, I worked as a "paralegal" at Melli, Guerin and Wall and lasted all of six weeks. The place is horrible. First off, it's boring no-fault defense work that is run in an antiquated manner. No case mgmt system (theirs is from 1986). No music allowed. No dress down. Constant memos and paper trails without anything being modernized. The place, in short, sucks. In my six weeks there, I saw one attorney quit, one paralegal quit, two secretaries get fired and all I heard was complaining from the people there and how they're all looking for work. No bonuses. Only "benefits" after 3 months and that only includes medical. Seriously, this place is a revolving door and the attorney I worked for thought who the hell he was.
Of course the answer to all of these gripes is to not work at these places? Right? Does anyone make you work at these dumps? Is the insanity of all of this complaining lost on everyone but me?
I worked at Freiberg a few years ago when I didn't know any better, and I COMPLETELY agree with the negative posts. Their managing associates are extremely bitter and disgruntled, and completely demoralizing as management. I left after about 2 months or so, when I realized that my life as a lawyer should be better than cutting and pasting motions together, sandwiched in a tiny office with loads of files and another attorney. I actually consider temping as a contract attorney a huge step up (in salary and lifestyle) from working at F&P.
I worked at Raymond Schwartzberg office when I garduated Law School in 1992. He was a dick back then. I made it only two days before I screamed Fuck You at Ray. If you are there leave. There is life afterwards
I knew someone who worked at Schwartzberg's office on a per diem basis for about 3 years. He told me that Schwartzberg tried to "con" him into working there full-time by saying to him that if he decided not to work there full-time he would "give the desk to someone else." He called his bluff, but it's interesting that Schwartzberg would try to pull something like this; interesting and probably revealing.
I have a case now with Ray Schwartzberg and I have not yet met the guy. My case has been going on for about 5 years now, i'm claiming for a No-Fault didn't think it was going to take this long. Certain thing's I dislike about these people, they don't keep contact at all in addition it's been about 2 years I haven't heard from them. Then out of the blue I have an appointment. That law firm has very poor communication with their clients which is not a good sign. I constantly call when I want details and no call backs. They are ridiculous.
I think this is the best blog I have been through all this day.
new york city dui
Per Diem Services, Inc.
My experience and the experience of other counsel I know, is the following: This firm runs a Ponzi scheme. The attorney owner, Freundlich, receives payment from the law firms that retain his company to have a court appearance covered for them. In turn, he contracts per diem counsel willing to do all the work for 50% of the fee. Freundlich then racks up the outstanding fees due one per diem attorney to pay the next, ultimately, refusing to pay the accumulated balances and diverting the total sum to himself. The other aspects of the attorney's questionable ethics are the subject of another day.
This is so true. I went for an interview, I think it was Raymond Schwartzberg. He didn’t mentioned his name, blatantly rude, and asked me to get out in 10 sec. He didn’t say thank you for coming to me. Not decent at all, no respect for other people. And the office was extremely messy, I’d be afraid if I was his client, paperwork may lost.
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