The Open Door Policy at my firm is a total trap. Management keeps saying they want feedback and transparency, but the last associate who spoke up about the bonus structure was restructured out of the firm a month later. It’s created this culture of silence where everyone complains in the breakroom but smiles and nods in the meetings. How do you handle a firm that says they want honesty but clearly rewards yes-men?

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Shocking. Partners being disingenuous? Who could imagine?

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In my experience, what you've described is just how the business world works. It's the same in corporate America too. You just need to accept that management is lying to you and figure out if your current situation is something you can endure or if it's worth it to go elsewhere. But you have to keep in mind that the culture anywhere else will be a slightly different version of the same thing.

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How can you expect growth in an environment like that? If most people have to remain tight-lipped about honest feedback and transparency, how can a person properly understand the correct path forward? OP’s working environment may also negatively impact collaboration on cases at their firm.

My last firm was like this but they didn’t even pretend to have an “Open Door Policy”. The partners I worked for explicitly apologized about all of the “closed doors” throughout the office because there was a rift among the partners themselves. I literally overheard partners in the hallways making threats that some might leave for a different firm. This wasn’t a small firm either.

It was a miserable place to work and I noped out in less than a year to go in house. Basically all the associates I worked with left shortly thereafter. They replaced the managing partner the next year.

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