Freiberg and Peck is a small auto insurance firm who does most of their work for Progressive, the car insurance company. In 2005 and 2007, Freiberg & Peck was won the Golden Toilet Award as the worst law firm for new associates (voting was conducted on JDjive.com and JDunderground.com, respectively). 

     Starting salary is in the low or mid $40's range. (Source: Link ). "Freiberg and Peck pays new attorneys $45k/yr"). You'll be in court almost every day which seems exciting at first but quickly becomes boring when you realize you're fighting over $200-$1000 medical bills for car accidents.

     The courts you go to are civil courts in Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn, Staten Island, and Manhattan. After doing this for a while, you feel more like a courier than a lawyer, because most of your time is spent getting to the court, filing documents, and then milling around waiting. Very little time is spent arguing anything. Most of the real work is done by just cutting and pasting motions together.

     The main advantage to working at a No Fault automobile insurance firm (such as Freiberg & Peck) is that you won't be putting in more than 10 hours a day. Expect to work from about 8 am (picking up files, traveling to civil court) until about 5:30 or 6:00 and ocassional weekends, especially when you first start. The downside to a firm like this is, bare minimum benefits. No car service, no meals on the client (often you'll just grab a quick lunch at a deli or fast food type place), no laptop, no secretary (you share a "secretary" with a half dozen other people and the "secretary" is some young girl making about $25k/yr), no real chance of making partner. Probably the biggest downside is that the experience you get won't help much with moving up the "food chain" to better practice areas. If you spend a few yrs at a firm like this, you may be pigeonholing yourself into auto insurance defense. Rightly or wrongly, many broader-based insurance firms look down on automobile insurance work and would rather hire someone who clerked for a judge or is lateraling from a government or non-insurance firm. Also, rightly or wrongly, No Fault associates often joke that they are more secretaries and couriers than attorneys, because much of their time is spent cutting and pasting motions (making token changes to documents, such as names/addresses/dates) and delivering them to court. This is a very real perception to know before you consider taking a job like this.

We have collected some information sent in via email on this page. However, for more Freiberg & Peck opinions, go to: Freiberg & Peck information.

     Here is a sampling of other people's thoughts on working at this Freiberg and Peck, LLP:

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Date: December 29th, 2007 9:02 PM
Author: boombjoe <3 hillary <3 sadness

I think a lot of partners in toilet lawfirms do Google the firm and read boards to see if people are telling potential future employees how bad it is there. Just like good lawfirms are discussed on XO, there is a lot of discussion of bad law firms on JDU.

Freiberg & Peck, Stern & Montana, and a few others happen to get talked about more than most because the people who run those places are delusional and think that a $45k/yr job with shit benefits doing paper-churning Insurance Defense work (on automobile insurance cases) = real litigation. They actually try to tell people in interviews that the job has good exit options and is valuable experience. F&P actually has claimed that people who leave (usually in 2 months after realizing it sucks) are lateraling into good firms

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=738038&forum_id=2#9086889)

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Another person's opinion of Freiberg & Peck: 

("I worked at Freiberg and Peck as my first job. CRAP FIRM!!!!!!!!! Not only are they [explicative deleted] but [they] require billables in the form of points. The poor lawyers who work there are either suckups or beaten down they are willing to keep working there vs temping.")

More feedback on Freiberg and Peck: "Freiberg and Peck is a place to go only if you've searched a few months and can't get anything. [I] dont have any good advice on how to survive if you end up there--as others have said, they treat everyone bad, not just the associates. [B]illing is via a point system and the client is Progressive Auto Insurance. [Y]our job is to deny medical bills associated with car accidents. [E]ven if you believe the bills are too high or the people are lying, its still pretty depressing. [A]nd ya, no one stays very long")

More Freiberg & Peck information at this link.

 

Note: Web information last updated: April 2008.