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The firm’s greater focus is on training you ‘how to write simply and jargon-free’ rather than training you on the law, and the legal, substantive and analytical skills that you should imbibe as a lawyer. Especially if you are in the policy team, you loose the essence of being a lawyer – you’re either drafting updates, organizing events, or making talking points for panel discussions/roundtables.
2. Artificial timelines: Most seniors have a habit of subjecting you to artificial timelines. Your learnings and lessons are often lost in the battle of trying to just meet the (artificial) timelines. Meeting these timelines and getting work done is the primary focus for many seniors, often at the expense of the employees’ deeper understanding on a particular subject and professional growth. The stress of unrealistic expectations has lead to decreased morale and productivity amongst most people in the associate pool.
3. Resource Crunch: This is an all-time all round-the-year issue at the firm – across teams. No team is ever equipped with enough resources to manage the work load. Most teams are run by/dependent on 1-2 junior-level resources at max. This puts an exorbitant amount of pressure on existing resources and not to mention burn them out. The disturbing part is that despite projecting itself as a new-age, unique, and well-cultured law firm, Ikigai Law is just absolutely unable to retain resources at the junior level. This is evident from the fact that no junior resource has stayed at the firm for more than 1.5-2 years (approx.) and all their teams entirely (and I stress on the term ‘entirely’) revamp after 1.5 years – you can check Linkedin to cross-verify this. The attrition rate of the firm is astonishing.
4. Writing Standards: The firm is far too consumed in maintaining and upholding its writing standards, that it often fails to appreciate a junior’s substantive knowledge, calibre and potential. Yes, we all like to read simple and unsophisticated writing. But the firm does not understand that it takes TIME to unlearn the rigorous legalese and writing style that we’ve all learned in law school for 5/3 long years and adopt a de-jargonized writing style. This cannot come to everyone naturally. A lot of times, employees are unable to deliver well on the substantive parts of a mandate because they are intimidated and panic-stricken about whether they have drafted a particular document simply enough. Having your entire draft struck off just because you couldn’t write in a particular style is demotivating on another level – especially when you took worldly efforts in getting the substantive part of the draft right.
5. Firing Policy: They have ‘fired’ people for not meeting the firm’s work standards. But what they fail to understand is that the reason why an employee may have not been able to perform as per expectations is because he/she was never taught the right skills by the firm in the first place!! A new person who joins the team cannot magically be expected to meet the firm's work standards without proper training and guidance. Expecting employees to perform at a high level without adequate training/support is an unreasonable expectation. Firing employees for not meeting standards without addressing the root cause — lack of training — reflects a fundamental flaw in the firm’s work culture.
6. It’s very, very, common for seniors to throw juniors under the bus and blame them for something they never did just to maintain and uphold their position/reputation in front of partners/seniors. As ridiculous as it sounds.
7. Once a senior has formed a particular opinion about you, it is unlikely to change – even if you have improved and worked on your shortcomings. They will treat you like you are incapable and don’t have to the potential to improve.
8. Work Culture: Improper management, unstructured work allocation, and chaotic work environment. You don’t have the time to have your meals in peace, let alone some good sleep or a work-life balance. Yes, we should all learn to multi-task, but that does not imply existing resources are dumped with an unreasonable amount of work that, in a normal sane workplace, would get distributed in a team of at least 5-6 resources. The management does not get that no employee is trying to escape work or work lesser when they say that the deliverables on their plate are unmanageable – instead they just want to be able to deliver good quality work and manage existing work efficiently. The firm has lost (as I’ve heard)/is losing exceptionally good resources due to lack of proper management. There is absolutely no line drawn between professional and personal. The firm endorses working beyond reasonably expected work hours.
9. For all new joiners, I suggest you particularly take from the firm in writing (over email) about the team you are interviewed for and want to eventually join. The firm often interviews you for one team and then puts you in another after you join. When you request them to switch your team/practice area, these requests are either not tended to, or, the response is that we first want to assure that you can demonstrate sufficient calibre in this practice area.
10. Compensation: Much much below industry standards and other firms that are similarly placed. The firm has band 1,2,3 rankings, FYI. Compared to the work load and the form’s expectations of you, the compensation is not worth it. The compensation Their probation, promotions, and bonus policy is also QUITE opaque. The reasons given for a person not clearing his/her probation are something to laugh at.
11. Too focussed on firm’s external branding instead of focussing on bringing about the much needed changes inside the firm.
The firm is understaffed and the Associates are so overburdened and immature that they blame interns for fucking up client-facing deliverables.