Pros
good place to learn, partners actually take time to teach better genuinely-nice-person-to-narcissistic-sociopath ratio than most private practice firms. ratio still favours the second group more the higher up you go good pro bono program a lot of flexibility for working mums, paid parental leave etc reasonable budgets junior lawyers get a professional bio on the firm website, and you can write your own bio junior lawyers do presentations and profile-building activities, rather than being chained to a computer desk in a dungeon to bill 25 hours a day
Cons
partners reluctant to promote and regularly keep SAs waiting 4 or 5+ years to be elevated - very early 2000s approach firm does not allow leapfrogging when promoting people. if the next most senior person to you by PQE is an underperformer, be prepared to wait until that person gets their act together (which might be never, or after humanity reaches its next evolutionary stage) before you get a look-in senior leadership not receptive to new ideas and struggles to understand views of younger workers. if you are a millennial or gen z employee you will have better luck communicating with aliens below market pay, $$ is traded for flexibility and some work-life balance if youre not a working mum, additional effort you put into developing your actual skills and doing the work instead of spending time with your kids will not be recognised senior leadership appears to have unspoken limit of one token principal from every racial minority group and no more