• “The firm's culture is a major plus. Partners are very respectful of your time, and the associates genuinely enjoy working together. Pre-pandemic, I could walk down the hall and find someone to grab lunch with almost every day.”
• “The firm is incredibly collegial. Lawyers and staff are friends outside of work [at] both firm-sponsored and impromptu events.”
• “GD has great colleagues who enjoy interacting with one another. There is an element of quirkiness and attitude of ‘live and let live.’”
• “The firm works hard to maintain a very friendly, informal, and approachable culture. I feel comfortable asking any questions to my senior associates and partners, and I believe they value and prioritize people having lives outside of work.”

• “Partners are very thoughtful about how they treat associates here. I genuinely feel as though my work is valued.”
• “Transparency varies depending on office and group, but the partners make an effort to communicate firmwide decisions to associates. The process for making partner or counsel is opaque, but there is an effort to make performance reviews more meaningful for associates.”
• “Partners respect associates and expect them to be autonomous at an early stage in their career. Firm decision making is not always transparent.”
• “While overall transparency can use some work, the partners I work with are fantastic and I've developed really strong working relationships with them. They are busy but always find a way to make time to answer questions, join client calls if needed, and review work.”

• “The hours are long, particularly at the moment, but partners still give associates as much flexibility as possible with respect to where and when work gets done, which makes the aggregate time commitment far more manageable.”
• “There is a staffing coordinator and an attempt to make sure that work is evenly distributed. Billable-hour [requirement is] 1,950, with 100 investment hours counted towards the billable requirement. As with all firms, top performers are often very busy, which can be overwhelming. That said, the firm partners don't hesitate to move matters around and assist with re-staffing when associates are too busy.”
• “More work than I would like because we are busy, but [I] appreciate that the firm is actively hiring and has hired people into my group to lessen existing lawyers’ workloads.”
• “I have a lot of flexibility with my schedule. I think I work a lot of hours compared to non-law firm jobs, but a very decent [number] of hours compared to other big firms. I am able to hit the billable-hour goal pretty easily every year but am never way above it.”

• “It's market compensation with generous bonuses. The billable requirement is feasible, and bonuses, from what I understand, will be pro-rated if you don't meet the requirement.”
• “Gunderson pays top of market and has matched all raises/bonuses since I have been here.”
• “Above-market bonuses and generous referral bonuses.”
• “The firm never fails to be a compensation leader despite its smaller size compared to peer firms.”

• “All of the work I do as an associate is substantive. I draft commercial documents/agreements, mark up deal documents, draft disclosure schedules, and have had client contact since I started. I've had no ‘busy’ work and feel like the work I do is meaningful.”
• “Associates get substantive work and client contact essentially from day one. It can be overwhelming when you are learning the ropes, but you get great experience right away and it develops your skills very fast.”
• “Gunderson is a unique firm in that the responsibility you're given is the responsibility that you are willing to take on and able to handle. There are very few assignments that I haven't been given the opportunity to take a first crack at and we have support and oversight to allow exposure to many different types of assignments regardless of our level.”
• “Given the volume of transactions we work on at Gunderson and the types of clients we serve, it is inevitable that associates will be fully running deals relatively early in their careers. As a senior associate, I am running nearly all transactions that I work on with minimal partner involvement. …”

• “The transition to work-from-home was seamless, and I have no complaints about our technology.”
• “Gunderson just upgraded their systems, which are much better than they were. The firm provided a work-from-home stipend to build out our home offices.”
• “[I] have had minimal issues with technology. To the extent there have been issues, the IT group has been extremely responsive.”
• “Yes, we are often getting/testing new software to support the legal services we provide. Working from home has been pretty smooth with Zoom, as I think is true pretty universally.”

• “We receive free counseling sessions and meditation sessions.”
• “The firm periodically offers wellness benefits for counseling, mental health, massages, etc., and encourages attorneys to speak to other attorneys or to specialists as necessary.”
• “It offers resources, but generally folks are too busy to take advantage.”
• “They do well with mental health services, but I think having a gym stipend would be nice.”

• “Being a smaller firm, mentorship and informal training thrive. The firm has also ramped up formal training and support programs commensurate with its growth over the past year.”
• “There are formal mentoring and training programs, such as several day-long boot camps diving into the practice area. While those are very useful, I found the most useful ‘training’ to happen informally and on the job, as partners and senior associates are very willing to help and provide feedback, notes, etc.”
• “The firm is very proactive on CLEs. Obviously, a lot of training is on the job, but partners and attorneys take time to educate and explain as needed.”
• “We do so many deals that the informal training is extensive, and it pays for partners to invest in associates so that they can give them more responsibility. Formal training has greatly improved over the past couple of years, with ‘bite sized,’ firmwide trainings on specific topics and regularly scheduled practice group trainings.”

• “I believe there is a good opportunity to make partner at the law firm. Senior associates can become Of Counsel. We work with a lot of startups, so usually lawyers exit and become GC at those startups.”
• “Associates talk openly about partnership promotions, and it seems like a realistic achievement if that is what you are targeting. If you are not interested, I've been told by lawyers that partners are involved in helping them find roles outside of the firm (at funds or other clients) based on their career interests.”
• “I believe promotion to partner is realistic for most hard-working associates.”
• “Associates in this group at this firm have a lot of opportunities to go in-house, at startups or at larger companies. The exit opportunities are great. I've also seen that a number of senior associates transitioned into other groups within the firm, like knowledge management, rather than follow the traditional partnership track. I have no idea what the partnership process is like.”

• “No formal pro bono apparatus, but [the] firm does support associates who want to do pro bono.”“While there were limited opportunities to participate in pro bono work during the pandemic (during which pro bono hours counted as billable hours without a cap), on the whole, Gunderson is still building out its pro bono initiatives. …”
• “Gunderson is working to provide more pro bono work … [and] I am currently staffed on two pro bono [matters]. Both require drafting and/or reviewing commercial agreements, which has been a really interesting and rewarding exercise. Pro bono hours count as billable hours.”

Diversity Efforts

• “Gunderson has really stepped up its game in terms of diversity efforts over the past couple of years. I do not know what the diversity metrics of the partnership are, but the associate ranks are more and more diverse every year.”
• “I think Gunderson is working to be better with respect to diversity and [is] making a conscious effort, which is shown in their recent hiring efforts.”
• “All firms can do better when it comes to diversity. The firm has created a diversity fellowship for the first time this summer 2021. The firm is open and willing to listen and make changes. The firm can do better, but I am happy and feel heard as a person of color.”
• “As with all firms, there is a lack-of-diversity issue, especially in higher ranks and with retention of diverse attorneys. The firm has a great parental leave policy, which I think has helped in the retention of female attorneys, and the firm has recently started POC affinity groups and offers billable credit for those heading the committees, but not for diversity-related activities otherwise.”