Pros
None. Zero. Nothing. Less than nothing.
Cons
I have genuinely struggled to put into words how unrelentingly awful and damaging my time at McMillan was. It has been more than a year since I finally escaped, and I am finally writing this review because I'm still dealing with the trauma and fallout, and I feel compelled to warn others so that they might avoid the misery I endured. You can believe me or not; but if you're reading this, and you consider yourself a kind person with a good heart and a lot of enthusiasm and you are *not* in the legal profession itself, run away and take LITERALLY ANY OTHER JOB. Arts grads, LGBT kids, emotional type-B bleeding hearts: this is the kind of place that will suck out your soul and keep taking and taking until you finally crumble. The culture and functioning of McMillan, particularly the Vancouver office, is one of the most mundanely toxic things I've ever encountered. Even the dysfunction of my own department was perfectly in line with the sluggish, conservative, slow-moving, and generally soulless culture fostered by employees from the top down. I was shoved into a situation for which I was not adequately prepared, and then I spent the next year and change being constantly panicked over the possible loss of my job due to mistakes that, it was later revealed, were utterly outside of my control and had been an issue long before I arrived at my position. Any attempts I made to improve workflows were met with brick wall after brick wall, until I eventually gave up and stopped trying to make things better. I cried every single day at that office; not once did anyone ever ask if I was okay. I was reported to HR for making too much noise, but no one bothered to ask why I was upset. Was it the insultingly low salary I was offered, which put me 10k below all of my peers and made basic subsistence a constant major stressor? Was it the fact that I was top of my graduating class and was put in charge of the most mundane tasks imaginable, despite constantly asking for work that I could be proud of? Was it the fact that all the diversity and queer-friendly posturings were revealed to be nothing but the soulless bare-minimum effort by the HR team which made no attempt to actually affect positive cultural change? It was all of that and more. I was subjected to a level of stress that exacerbated a chronic illness until I could barely function. I was too nauseous to eat most of the day. I was in agonizing pain and could barely walk. I had panic attack after panic attack because I cared about my work and I wanted to do a good job, but I was left with virtually no support from any higher-ups and no trajectory in sight. I was so proud to work there, and I was demeaned and dejected until I stopped being proud of my life. I poured everything I had into this job, and all that happened was that my mental and physical health suffered long-term damage while the machine of McMillan churned on without stopping. That's what I want to convey here: that all of the misery I endured was nothing but the output of the sheer toxicity that emanates from the entire building, a toxicity that is tolerable enough for enough people that it doesn't warrant pause or reflection on their part. What happened to me was the system working as intended. I am completely sure that, barring the pandemic, nothing will have changed since I left. This company is toxic. The people are toxic. Those who aren't either leave or become toxic in order to survive. This is the kind of place where people think creativity is something you outgrow in childhood. This is the kind of place that treats its non-legal support staff like garbage and expects them to literally eat up their scraps and say thank you. This is the kind of place that boasts about reflection rooms and personal wellness days, but has absolutely no human connection underneath. It is the kind of place that has no official org chart, because the turnover is so high that updating it would be a near-constant hassle. Some people are happy there, and I'm happy for them. I'm glad they've found a place that works for them, and I fully admit that part of my agony at this firm was a fundamental personality clash between my sense of identity and the corporate values and culture of the Vancouver office. But if you care about your (non-law) work, if you want a workplace with genuine values and people who will see you as a human being, then do not work at McMillan. It's not worth the stress and frustration and misery. You will suffer for nothing, and you will walk away worse off than when you were hired. I regret accepting this job every single day of my life.