lawyer

administrative assistant

legal assistant

law clerk

directeur commercial

Borden Ladner Gervais LLP

Amazing co-workers, (one stellar upper manager), wonderful back-end staff and genuinely caring/good lawyers (with a single bad apple, the shouty guy who punches walls!) but staff burnout was a thing and a lot of staff/lawyers quit. Support staff like me tended to stay but there were many little things management could have done to keep staff happy that just never happened (Work From Home!). Many staff commuted long hours for years, if not decades with no attempt to smooth things for them (on-call phone started ringing at 6:01 when the phone system could easily have been set to accommodate the two hours we were supposed to have to get home and get a bite after a full 9hr work day). Also zero advancement unless someone retired and ancient/non-existent IT tooling with no hint of automation or productivity thinking. Fight to get a testing environment, patching/update management, hardware and software auditing, laptop imaging, etc. Co-workers made it all worthwhile though (at-least for a while). Fun events (golf, dinners, etc) though.

- Typical work day: Office administrative duties; entering lawyer's daytimer for docketing purpose; setting up exam for discovery; dicta-typing up correspondence and legal documents eg. Motion, Brief, Summons etc.; drafting up correspondence; travel arrangement for lawyer; meeting clients with lawyer; updating case law and statutes; assisting lawyer in writing legal books etc.
- Sharpened skills in communication (both oral and written)
- Learned to set priorities and time-management and independence and work with own initiatives
- Learned tactfulness in interpersonal relationship at work
- Co-workers - fun-loving and loyal - formed many great and long term relationship with them
- Hardest part of job - no particular hard part (I've been in the field for a long time)
- Most enjoyable part of job - Able to know many intercultural co-workers and get to enlarge my view of people coming from different countries

What is the best part of working at the company?
Remote capacity, variety of clients

What is the most stressful part about working at the company?
Micro-management from the 2 overseeing co-founders made the job insufferably unbearable. Hired for senior experience and not allowed to type out a 2 line email without review?!!

What is the work environment and culture like at the company?
stifling, antiquated, with too little of actual workload and too much management interference in every single process / step and documentation.

What is a typical day like for you at the company?
lots of boredom, little to do, docketing of time becomes a game of trying to invent more time into small administrative steps; they stifle the law clerks and overhire with Junior Lawyers.

What is the best part of working at the company?
My Team awesome and the firm in general is rich in social diversity and the environment is just rich in positive vibration

What is the most stressful part about working at the company?
You never know if you’re appreciated. Working with people with 15-30 years of experience can pose its challenges for people just starting their career.

What is the work environment and culture like at the company?
Amazing people, lost of food, good work life balance

What is a typical day like for you at the company?
It’s not too busy not too slow, manageable work load. As for task, things aren’t usually a rush. Steady enough to encourage us to invest in our social work life

BLG is an integrated national firm that provides a broad range of legal solutions to their clients with over 750 lawyers, intellectual property agents and other professionals in Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto, Waterloo Region, Ottawa and Montreal.

•	Created letters, documents, general typing, scanning, billing and processing the mail.  
•	General office duties while working with a senior paralegal and a partner of the Commercial Conveyance Division.
•	Demonstrated strong team work and work ethic while starting in the mandatory rotational Legal Assistant pool and earning a permanent placement with a senior partner in just six months.
•	Trained on CMS and DM.

What is the best part of working at the company?
The culture is great, there are a lot of people who've worked there for many, many years. 

What is the most stressful part about working at the company?
Career movement might be a little slower than usual and change management could be a bit slower. 

What is the work environment and culture like at the company?
It's actually really great, I've met a lot of life long friends there. 

What is a typical day like for you at the company?
It is busy but not to a point where you can't breathe. Everyone is very supportive in getting tasks done.

In my time at blg I experienced a lot of bullying from managers when I spoke out against being bullied out of my position. Managers here will hire someone to take over your position without letting you go or moving you somewhere else first, leaving you feeling like you have no idea what your job is anymore. Then they wait for you to react and then blame it on you. 

It's a cut throat work environment, only apply here if you can handle it. Benefits and pay are great, Idk if it's really worth your soul though. 

•	Transcribe and type legal documents 
•	Compile affidavit of documents, compendiums and other legal productions
•	Organize and expedite flow of work 
•	Route or answer correspondence 
•	Initiate follow-up as required 
•	Organize and maintain client files 
•	Communicate with clients 
•	Schedule meetings 
•	Perform clerical, administrative and general office duties 
•	Perform administrative duties with respect to accounting, opening and closing files, docketing, billing, etc. 
•	Assisting other group professionals as required 
•	Other duties as assigned

What is the best part of working at the company?
Training and mentorship are an integral part of BLG. 

What is the most stressful part about working at the company?
The competition. You have to keep your skills and knowledge up to date.

What is the work environment and culture like at the company?
It is very positive and friendly.

What is a typical day like for you at the company?
Managing a senior partner’s practice which includes daily maintenance and upkeep of current files, monitoring emails, etc.

I was employed at BLG for a year and the lawyers i worked for were extremely picky and highly stressful, nothing was ever good enough they do not realize how busy you are. HR has gone downhill they do not care about what you have to say i was a victim of harrasment i caught my lawyer talking badly about my work to another superior extremely unprofessional. Would constantly get stressful emails stay away! stressful enauls. To ic place stay away!! 







termination ketter in order to recrievr the rest of my severence pau

Top Job Titles	Average salary
Lawyer 5 salaries reported	$150,600 per year
Administrative assistant 13 salaries reported	$51,308 per year
Legal assistant 5 salaries reported	$50,200 per year
Law clerk 4 salaries reported	$80,000 per year
Directeur commercial 12 salaries reported	$58.50 per hour

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