My review of this article: It sucks.

ATL to TTT.

Seriously, all we are getting lately is:

Halverson
Old News
ATL Idol Garbage
1L Only News
Polls that belong on MySpace

I stopped checking this site for two months and now I come back and it feels ENTIRELY different. It's like New Coca-Cola -- no one likes it and it leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

I agree with 3 - this site is catering to law students these days. How about some news real lawyers care about?

4: How is your firm's review process not something "real lawyers" care about?

That is the best cat picture to date. Hysterical!

I love the cat pictures. The one in this horrible poll/story reminds me of the women in my office.

5: Unless you work at my firm, there's no reason to care about the review process (which, by the way, is quite good)

3: Here, here!

In all fairness, they can only report what they got. If you have something juicy, something that would be of interest to "real lawyers" shoot them an email. They depend pretty heavily on tips from "real lawyers" like you!

Here's a general question about associate reviews. At my old law firm, associates were only permitted to read their reviews for about 5 minutes. No copies were furnished, and requests for copies were denied. The (bogus) rationale for this policy was that reviews do not really mean anything because they are a picture at a fixed moment in time. Their relevance comes into play only in the following year to compare performance.

My question is: are other associates permitted to retain copies of their performance reviews???

My firm does not even give you a copy of your review. They just read selected portions from it. I have received negative reviews from partners who, when contacted after the fact, said they had intended to give a good review. Perhaps they just didn't expect to get called out on that.

It's a CYA ploy. That way, anything can be swept under the "poor performance" rug without any recourse. What are you really going to do, subpoena a law firm for copies of your evaluations?

11: At my old firm we got our written evaluations a day in advance of our verbal evaluations. We all just made copies of them as soon as we got them the day before.

One thing that might also need to be considered is that some of us have raises linked to our reviews now. My latest review was excellent, but they still screwed me on my raise due to "economic concerns." So while my review itself was positive, I'm more tempted to look for another job because of the pittance raise they gave me as part of it.

All this leads me to conclude that the "performance-related" firings are all bullshit. It sounds like everyone has been getting neutral or middling reviews so the firm has the choice of firing anyone they want for performance reasons. Bleh.

WilmerHale gives associates copies of their reviews to keep. The partners submit reviews in writing, and those exact reviews are passed along to the associates (partner names included!) along with a summary intended to give the associate an idea of whether s/he is on track, above average, not on track, etc., along with specific skills/areas where the associate should seek to improve. We get the reviews twice a year. It's not a perfect system, but it sounds like it might be a lot better than some other firms out there. . .

At Sidley, you do not even see the written reviews. We get reviewed twice a year. The partner in charge of the review reads your reviews to you (or at you) and it is hard to keep track of what is being said or even of the tone of the reviews. Some of the categories have number ratings and since they read those "at" you and never give you a written key, it is hard to keep track of what each number means. You cannot compare to previous review sessions. If you ask to see the written copy, you will not get permission.