Pros
BAL actually does a good job on certain aspects of being an employer. Well, really, just two. First, my coworkers were amazing and continue to this day to be my closest friends. When I was working for BAL, I found that whenever I was having a horrible day, my coworkers were quick to come to my cube to comfort me and share very kind and needed words. What makes these coworkers so sympathetic to each other? It’s because we were all on the same struggle bus and felt the bumps, both as little as an unhappy review to as big as a termination threat. We were familiar with each other’s struggles. Second, BAL actually has a good PTO program. Managers were easy to work with in terms of time off. Not a lot of red tape to get anything approved.
Cons
Ah, so this is where I go off. Y’all ready? Lack of inspiration — I honestly think the most prominent weakness of BAL stems from this. Business immigration itself is a lot of difficult, monotonous work. I wish BAL was able to combat that by being an inspirational employer to work for. Sadly, they’ve only made the practice even more uninspiring. How do they do this? See below: Pay — for the kind of work expected out of their employees, BAL severely underpays them. Not much to say here, obviously. Want to make more money in an inherently underpaid industry like business immigration? Then BAL is not for you. Unless, of course, you’re coming in as a partner or some other high-level employee whose pay makes zero sense given the little money PLs, AAs, and IAs receive. Punitive measures — BAL dishes out punitive measures to drive their employees into producing more work, even though they are already suffering from unethical caseloads. This is a terrible practice and only adds to the mental trauma faced by BAL’s employees daily. Such measures include stiffly-worded emails and phone calls with HR. I feel like the last thing overworked employees need is a threatening energy from their managers. Workload — I get it. More cases = more money. But the quality of cases produced at BAL is probably not ideal given how thinly spread their staff can be. It will not take a new employee to realize s/he has entered an immigration sweatshop. In addition to this, an employee will regularly encounter attorneys/managers who breathe down their necks and impose crippling micromanagement upon their staff. Management — It surprised me to learn that there were that many partners at BAL. It felt like there were too many cooks in this dysfunctional kitchen. In addition to that, leadership has also exhibitedsome unsavory behavior during my time. A prime example is the all hands meeting from early this year. The Managing Partner, the firm’s CEO, based out of Dallas became visibly upset on live broadcast (which is already distressing for us underlings to see) over the dismal survey results that revealed how unhappy BAL employees are with their employer. Instead of maturely and professionally addressing us, the Managing Partner erupted and suggested that if we’re really that unhappy, we should just leave. Not only that, he stated that he and leadership would even assist disgruntled employees with their exit. I found that incident to be extremely inappropriate and lacked the kind of leadership the firm needed. Very sad! Furthermore, the recent and abrupt personnel population decrease due to sudden lay offs across multiple offices should tell you a lot about leadership’s ability to plan, or lack thereof. People were onboarded onto the firm, only to be told their roles were to dissolve a couple of weeks after they had just completed training.
