Pros
Insurance defense firms give associates a high level of responsibility (because it's cheaper). But you will also learn lots of bad habits and people will assume your work product is trash.
Cons
The entire structure of the firm rests on sucking the associates and few hardworking partners dry. There are too many lazy, useless partners who do absolutely nothing but wait to collect money and harass others to bill more. The pie is shrinking at an astonishing speed. Many of the existing partners do not bring in any money at all, and the rainmakers have left by the masses. Yet every year, the firm promotes even more new partners and equity partners to split the pie. No one sits down and crunches the numbers of how that math is really working out for them. No one does the math of how much money they’re losing by driving attorneys away—even the ones who never planned on leaving. No one does the math of how much money they’re losing on recruitment/and the utter failure to recruit anyone. The best attorneys have pretty much all left by now. Every year there is a new exodus of attorneys dying to get as far away as possible. Look on the website and you will know—the firm is now made up of 90% partners. What associate would want to come to a place like this? Does the firm not realize how scary that is? Retention is an absolute joke because the firm does not give a flying rat’s arse about what people really want. The pay is ridiculously low--on par with secretary pay at similar firms. But the billable requirement is through the roof. Staff are pissed and vindictive, associates are depressed, and hardworking partners (what few who have yet to leave) have long since broken their backs from carrying everyone at the firm. The office politics is pure toxic and people only talk in whispers. As far as experience goes, everything is cut and paste. At this point, it’s no secret among the small industry of insurance defense attorneys that Walsworth is in trouble. Nothing about this firm is sustainable.