clerk

legal assistant

Smart & Biggar

A typical day is busy and I enjoy busy. What I don’t enjoy is mean. 
I learned not to trust my management, but I also learned a little about how that side of the legal system works and found it fascinating. There is kindness, just not from the people in the accounting department that you’re working with, they were just the worst. I am not surprised that there are repeated openings for the same job in AP over and over.
The company itself is a great company and most of the people I met or interacted with were very nice, friendly, polite, thoughtful. Overall, I did enjoy my time there.

This was the worst job experience I have ever had.
Minimal training with very high expectations. They only care about the volume of work you put out, your other qualities will go unnoticed.
Small, understaffed team because people leave or get fired within a year.
I was only told after a year that my performance is not satisfactory and only found out then the criteria used to rate performance. 
The manager is from a different office and has a hard time understanding the issues we face.
I was accused multiple times of things I did not do.
There is no minimum pay raise each year.
The job involves lots of communication with other departments and there are many unprepared or incompetent staff members.

You are expected to perform at top level right out of the gate, literally with no training whatsoever, even though it was promised multiple times over.  In a year and half my manager changed 4 times, and often had no clue what our team's responsibilities were. There is no "work/life balance" because everything is "urgent". My colleagues all took sick leave for mental health and I was literally the only person left doing the jobs of 4 people. Management was not supportive at all.  After a year of hard work, there was no recognition, 
bonus or raise offered. 

Poorly managed. Underperformers are rewarded and good employees are seen as a threat. Lie and collude to cover their unethical decisions. Poor team environment with little support. Manager has no training or education and acts in toxic competition with employees, particularly new ones with degrees. 

Be careful if they single you out as threat to fire because they force others under them to corroborate their fabrications with HR and cover their tails with a paper trail. Then, they get rid of you.

A typical day at Smart & Biggar would be super busy with processing 1000's of Patent files daily.  Management was ok and the workplace culture was just developing to feel more inclusive for everyone.
The hardest part of this job was staying on top of processing mountains of CIPO mail daily.    The most enjoyable part of this job was the teamwork and how we all got along like good friends daily.

Great co-workers, but work environment is heavily dependent upon which person you work for. Firm was acquired last year by IPH Group, and has re-orged. New owners are bean counters only, so necessary improvements in basic things aren't really contemplated.  They'll pay lip service to it, but that's about it. 

Training is chaotic 90% of the time - pressure to do everything perfectly with guidance that is sometimes unclear and incomplete.
Poorly value their employees. Work culture is poor - it is somewhat tribal and hard to feel welcome as a new employee. They do not seem to care about their employees - only about getting the results out of them.

Worked here for 9 years. The pay started off good, and then the raised stopped altogether. Management/supervisors act like superior beings and dump work on you even if you are super busy. And the seemingly random firings were absurd. Overtime is unspoken, but mandatory if you don’t want to get in trouble. Sooo glad I quit.

my team, supervisor and everyone i worked with were always very supportive, easygoing and made the work a lot more enjoyable when the volume got heavy. hardest part of the job would be volume, maybe we were a bit understaffed but that's pretty standard anywhere from my experience. The only reason i left was to explore other opportunities in my own city. 

I've made a mistake of leaving a good company for them. Training is a joke, deadlines are a complete mess. Very poor organization and management enjoys drama to the next level. Very sad place, so happy I left. And feel sorry to those who stayed.

Top Job Titles	Average salary
Clerk 5 salaries reported	$56,500 per year
Legal assistant 3 salaries reported	$54,333 per year

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