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Stuart Miller Solicitors

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Stuart Miller Solicitors Reviews

3.9

85% would recommend to a friend

(16 total reviews)

80% positive business outlook

Stuart Miller Solicitors has an employee rating of 3.9 out of 5 stars, based on 16 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The Stuart Miller Solicitors employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Legal industry (3.8 stars).

Reviews by job title

16 reviews
1.0
14 July 2022

Stay away from this firm

Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

You are thrown in the deep in as soon as you start as will have your own caseload up to 100. You will learn very quickly how to deal with a file by yourself.

Cons

Where do i start with Stuart Miller Solicitors. This firm does not care about their employees and plainly uses people whilst paying a very low salary, almost slave labour. There is no support, you will have to deal with all your files with 0 support from solicitors. Unexperienced caseworkers are dealing with serious matters. The workload. You will be absolutely drained, if you dare to complain about your work load, you will be told its your fault as you are not doing overtime and leaving the office at 5:30pm. Management are bullies and very rude. Certain employees get special treatment whereas others are not even acknowledged. The employees who get special treatment by management can walk in 1 hour late and this will be totally fine, however if anyone else is a minute late, this will be a huge problem. Toilet breaks are checked, you will be in trouble if you go to the toilet more than 3 times a day. I cried many times in this firm due to the way i was being treated, all my tears were ignored and laughed at. People are constantly in and out of this firm, the toxic environment is unbearable. This firm is not professional in the slightest way. Also i have noticed CCTV being mentioned quite alot. The CCTV is an issue, the employer response has stated that CCTV is required as criminals are in the office, Then why is there CCTV in our own personal work space? Why are we being watched on the CCTV? There is 0 trust, you will feel like you are in a jail in this firm.

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Stuart Miller Solicitors Response
3y
Thank you former employee for your comments and feedback. Indeed, working at a Criminal Law firm with the pressures of defending people's liberties at a pittance from the Legal Aid Agency is not easy. If it were up to us, we would pay everyone £100,000 to work 6 hours a day, 4 days a week. Sadly, that is not the state in which we live and justice is waved around on the cheap. We appreciate your words but disagree with your opinions. We have the highest bracket of salaries in Criminal Defence £22,000 to £25,000 if you have some experience. If you have no experience, then we are paying you to teach you and even then, our salary is £20,000. We are not a corporate / commercial firm able to pay £30k plus to paralegals. It is incomprehensible that a top 1% UK law firm can hand-over to 1 paralegal ,or Solicitor, 100 files. Your suggestion would mean we have more than 4000 active files right now, which we wish was true, but regrettably is not. If you are merely writing client-care letters and client-closing letters, then we expect you can handle more than 100 files at a time, as it takes 1 hour to complete this task, 7, in a day, 35 a week and 140 a month. CCTV is indeed in all accessible areas of the office and thankfully so. Just last week (October 22) we had to call the police after our staff were attacked and abused in the office and much credit to our cameras, we held evidence to deter others in the future and ensure safety and security to our staff. This policy shall remain, as it does in all corners of the world we now walk; there are cameras everywhere for safety security (aside from the fact that we have 3 floors and 16 different zones to monitor, which simply cannot be done without cameras). In any event, thank you for your service with us. If you lasted in our hard working, fast paced and highly stressful work environment for this period, you must have been very competent and adding significant value to the firm and our clients. We thank you for this contribution and wish you the best of everything in the future. Stuart Miller Solicitors
1.0
9 May 2022
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

A great place to get experience as a first paralegal job. A lot of responsibility given and an opportunity to work on interesting cases. Clean workspace and adequate working equipment provided. Nice co-workers.

Cons

Unfortunately several but a lot have potential to get better. 1. The management - staff hierarchy has a very weird dynamic. It is more similar to a teacher - student at secondary school environment rather than an employer - employee relationship. Very difficult to work in if you have had previous professional working experience in a corporate environment. Examples of difficulties are staff being watched on CCTV whilst working (and having the CCTV zoomed in on to see what they are doing on work laptops). Whilst I’m sure there are reasons, not a normal experience at work. 2. Lack of adequate supervision and training. Whilst I understand this is undergoing changes, unfortunately there are huge gaps in the training and development area. There are no training modules or online courses, you will be expected to take on your own cases within the first week of your employment. Training ‘materials’ provided are often regulatory guides that can be found in simple google searches. Supervising solicitors spend most of their day at court which means caseworkers spend majority of their day paper pushing and unable to learn from those qualified and develop. Management described caseworkers as ‘administrators’ in a team meeting. 3. Pay is not competitive for responsibility given. This role will want you to act like a solicitor, you will be expected to handle client conferences alone, go to prisons to meet clients, attend court and liaise with counsel. You will be held accountable and management will hold you accountable (but not give you adequate supervision time or constructive feedback). People are very aware of the toxic dynamic and attitude at the firm, with even certain members of management asking staff to give other members of management the benefit of the doubt when spoken to unprofessionally. The firm lacks a layer of management between upper management (who are undoubtedly good lawyers and business orientated) and someone with a management qualification and experienced in people management from a corporate viewpoint. It is important to flag that some of the positive reviews below are not genuine and frankly the responses to the negative reviews below should also indicate to a reader the toxic, argumentative and narcissistic attitude of some members of the firm.

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Stuart Miller Solicitors Response
4y
Dear former employee Thank you for your kind positive comments and your negative observations, which are appreciated and reflective of your obvious 'hate' and unfairness. We will take this opportunity that you have kindly provided us to address only a few issues for the benefit of the readers: Teacher-student relationship Indeed this is correct. You mentioned yourself that this is a "great place for a first paralegal job". We are very proud to teach our new Paralegals for the ruthless and zealous life of a Criminal Lawyer, responsible for the liberty and freedom of an accused person, relying on the tenacity of the Lawyer to secure his rights and fight his corner. Our training usually starts with: "This is not a joke. You are playing with people's lives and families and their freedom and basic human rights". To this end, we spend £000,000s every year teaching new members of staff to be fantastic and unforgiving Lawyers. Countless former employees trained at this firm are now heading CPS divisions and leading very significant teams in corporate Law firms. Training We are probably the only criminal law firm in the UK which provides a huge amount of online training courses online, before the job commences. We then provide 2-3 weeks of full-time class-room training with a Director. This is supported by weekly videos added to the online platforms from senior Lawyers like Colin Beaumont. We also have access to 1000s of videos from legal experts on the MBL Seminars platform, accessible from anywhere. Our training programme has trained and qualified hundreds of Criminal Lawyers and is one of, if not the best, in the country. Your lack of skill and ability to comprehend the challenges facing Lawyers everyday was the main reason you struggled to embrace this role and responsibility. Corporate Environment We are a High-Street Law Firm, not an Amazon corporate office . The atmosphere in a corporate office and a high street legal aid firm cannot be expected to be the same. We have an incredibly professional and well structured office but we certainly cannot compete with corporate law firms. Management This firm was established in 1984 and has been led by the current management team since 2005. From a ranking of -1,500 We are now one of the largest criminal law firms in the UK and in the top 10. We suggest that management of this firm are experienced and skilled in handling the affairs of this developing and growing successful law firm. CCTV Indeed, as we work with those accused of very serious criminal offences, our risk analysis led us to install CCTV cameras. Our office is navigated with a corridor and stair cases over 3 floors. Our staff are spread between 10 different rooms, all isolated with doors off the main corridor. We have had past instances where burglaries have happened during the day and laptops with confidential data have been taken. We have PANIC alarms for staff safety. We are constantly monitoring CCTV cameras for our vulnerable staff sitting alone in meeting rooms with potential murderers and rapists and sexual offenders with mental health issues. IT WOULD BE LUDICROUS & RECKLESS FOR US NOT TO MONITOR EVERYTHING ON CCTV CAMERAS ! In addition, in rare circumstances, if we are investigating our employees for any reason (such as watching TV Programmes whilst sitting on their desks or downloading confidential data on external USBs which is not allowed) then maybe CCTV is employed to gather evidence ! After all, one of the purposes of CCTV is to gather evidence and in all walks of life, we are monitored and regulated and our performance is observed with CCTV since everything is moving towards efficiency and remote working. We stand proudly by our policies and all new recruits sign a contract which expressly notifies them of our policies from the outset. We do not monitor performance using CCTV as our computer system tells us exactly what every employee is doing, every minute of the day. It is more efficient to use this platform, which we use actively. Lacking a layer of Management This is also correct. Our office manager position has been unfilled for some time due to the lack of need during Covid and now, due to our efforts to identify the right person with the best skills for this very important role. Nevertheless, we will employ a practice manager who will continue to manage the office in critical way, looking always for perfection across all sectors and able to handle the nature of Lawyers, who aren't the easiest employees to deal with due to their very nature of being able to create arguments and dissect every aspect of policy and regulation with their own vision. Thank you for this opportunity to provide a response. We wish you all the best and hope you learned with us and find more suitable employment and this time, we pray that you are successful in achieving your goals. Best wishes Stuart Miller Solicitors
5.0
19 Apr 2022

Best place I've worked

Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

At Stuart Miller Solicitors, there are a vast amount of work benefits like having your birthday off, flexible working days and parking. You are given a variety of work which is based upon your expertise and skill set. There's never a day you are not busy!

Cons

I would suggest an easier way to communicate with management without fear of looking 'stupid'.

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Stuart Miller Solicitors Response
4y
Thank you so much for your kind review and feedback. We are always trying to improve the working atmosphere and will look into creating a better channel for communication.
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