Law Firms

[DanC]

Has anybody on here ever worked with or for a large global law firm? Having not had any previous exposure I'm interested in people's thoughts and experience as to what it would be like working in that sector as a network dude

[Reggle]

Not a global one, but I've done a project for a law firm and talked with engineers that worked at other law firms.
I'm not sure what to say about it. Confidentiality is an absolute top priority, so encryption is too. That by itself is a great challenge, however...
1) Lawyers don't seem to understand that requires budget, downtime for implementation, and maintenance. Networking is plumbing for them. So most encryptions for flows are never implemented.
2) Their network really is plumbing: typical setups of hub and spoke WAN sites, usually cost-effective so IPsec over internet. Probably the only place you'll use encryption. On-site a simple layer 2 access topology. So no mayor challenges there, although you do get the chance to make a scalable network using the same design everywhere instead of a cluttering mess.
3) Lawyers as end-users are, sorry to say, complete *ssholes. They are IT illiterate (which is their right, they're end-users, they don't need to know my job) but then get agitated quickly and use their experience in reasoning against you (which they are of course very proficient at).

Again, I have no in-dept experience but I don't think I'd be very interested.

[Nerm]

I have never worked for a law firm directly, but my current employer is a consulting firm with about 50% of their clients being SMB sized law firms. From my experience dealing with them I agree with everything Reggle said. Some of my worst projects were for law firms and by worst I mean required to work a miracle with a super small budget. They are cheap cheap cheap and as Reggle mentioned they are also normally some of your most inept IT end-users. IT in general is considered no more important to them than the cleaning crew that comes in and cleans the office at night.

*Disclaimer: My experience is with SMB sized law firms so your experience with a large global one could be completely different.

[icecream-guy]

I worked for a debit collection law firm for 4 years,  crappy crappy place, treated debit collectors like sit.  focus was on the MONEY$$MONEY$$MONEY, never did upgrades until we had to, then it was buy the cheapest piece of S and make it work.
I get the feeling that they thought they were above the law in some ways, but I'll not go down that road. IT desk had ticket quotas. 3 per day needed to be closed, we used to joke for making tickets to arrive on time, go to lunch, and leave on time just to meet the quotas. Debit collectors used to hate us IT guys, if their computer crashed, and were out of service, they'd loose time to meet their weekly income goals they needed to hit or bad things would happen. so it was extremely important to get them back online quickly, usually for any issue we'd drop a box with a clean image, and they'd back working in about 15. I was eventually told that the department was reorganized, and I no longer "fit" into the plan, few months later I found one of the contractors had my job.  glad to be out of there, oh, and they didn't pay well,  YMMV in another law field, but debit collection was lowest of the low. crappiest of the crap... run away...run away....

[routerdork]

A buddy of mine worked for one last year. He's much happier at his new job. Needless to say he said the law firm was very unethical and lied in the way it dealt with things. I don't have any examples that I can remember but I do remember him saying his dismissal was prompt. And honestly is he really was wronged, how is he going to fight a law firm? Maybe just one bad place amongst the many but I personally wouldn't want to.

[deanwebb]

I know a lot of lawyers... basically, if you're not a senior partner at a law firm, you're going to be working like a dog. Money flows to mahogany.

I know some small firms that do lots of public and pro bono work. Those lawyers are salt of the earth guys, so they're not overbearing with their IT, but they're as close to broke as lawyers can be, so no money for nothing.

Huge law firms mean huge egos at the top and sharks trying to swim up to join them. I don't know if I'd want to work for a firm run by sociopaths.

[DanC]

Some interesting points here, thanks guys!