An Inside Look at the Skadden Annual Review Process

Today, we take an inside look at the annual review process for attorneys at Skadden Arps. In this special report, we'll provide general observations on the Skadden review process, highlight noteworthy comments from leaked attorney evaluations, and show you a few reviews in their entirety. If you're interested in learning more about performance reviews at one of the world's biggest and best law firms, please keep reading....

Here are ten selected negative excerpts from the Skadden antitrust reviews — in other words, things that you do not want said about you in a review. Most take the form of mild, constructive criticism:

  • “very senior for the type of work he did”;
  • “needs to assert herself more in group settings and contribute her valuable insights”;
  • “her aggressiveness may cause her to get a little out front of situations”;
  • “has had relatively little deal experience for someone of her seniority”;
  • “not putting in the hours to get things done on time”;
  • “[she] needs the same type of training you would expect of a junior associate…. learning to summarize key points and not be ‘over-inclusive'”;
  • “[he] did not see take ownership of a particular [client name redacted] assignment that required him to obtain certain data from co-counsel in order to complete a discovery demand for DOJ…. seemed to lack confidence in reporting his conclusions or recommendations”;
  • “needs to be careful not to allow herself to become overloaded…. needs to project more confidence especially when interacting with clients…. needs to improve her legal research and writing”;
  • “needs to learn to apply the skills and lessons from one project (and from one day) to the next…. also needs to be more proactive and understand the role and expectations of a young associate…. [sometimes] it comes across as if [he] has sought to do the minimum expected of him rather than trying to bring value to the team”; and
  • “talked with him about checking email more regularly and responding more quickly.”

In case you didn’t get the memo: CHECK YOU [sic] EMAIL.

In the next few pages, we reprint a few reviews in full (but redacted to remove attorney and client names). We’ve replaced the lawyers’ names with pseudonyms that reflect the content of their evaluations. Some of these reviews were positive, and some were… less so.

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