Description
- Criticism in a law firm varies based on the associate's level: junior associates should expect harsh critiques to facilitate improvement, while mid-level associates typically receive less criticism as they contribute to firm profitability.
- Senior associates may experience peculiar reviews as they become a potential threat to the firm's profits and partnership prospects.
- Criticism often arises from low billable hours, as higher hours are assumed to reflect good performance.
- Severe criticism can occur even with limited hours, indicating potential issues or a high workload demand.
- Apart from mistakes, attitude, drive, accountability, trust, and likability play significant roles in how associates are evaluated.
- Law firms may provide negative reviews to encourage certain individuals to leave.
Transcript
Transcript:
You Said We Shouldn’t Take Criticism From a Law Firm Too Personally. However, in What Cases Is Severely Harsh Criticism a Sign You Should Leave and Might Be in Danger?
Okay, so the criticism from a law firm works in many different ways. Criticism is a fun topic. There's kind of two points being criticized. There's, as a junior associate, there's a mid-level, and then there's at a senior.
So junior associates should expect harsh criticism for the most part, to the extent the law firm needs to do that to improve. Junior associates typically will make a lot of dumb mistakes, and so the law firm typically has this kind of person whose job is to step in and give harsh criticism. But the idea is that you'll improve.
Mid-level associates are where the firm starts making much money off you. They do that because they can give you work, you know what you're doing, you're profitable, you're just great. You're not a threat to be a partner; there's no reason to criticize you.
You're a senior associate; they may say things like you're on the right track. But generally, the reviews start getting a little weird. So they're making less money from you. You're more of a threat because your billing rate is slightly higher. Your billing rate's kind of getting closer to partners, so for them to give you work, they're making less money. So you become a money thing again. And not only that, but you could also make a partner, in which case, even though a big firm, it doesn't compute. Theoretically, you're taking more of the profits of the firm, and that's a threat to them too. Then, of course, they were hazed very highly when they were senior associates.
So senior associates will often get weird reviews that are just neutral, and nothing's happening, or they might be a little bit negative. So often, criticism comes from low hours; they assume that if you're billing many hours, you must be doing good work.
And again, partners get these reports every week or sometimes months of what people's hours are, what other partners' hours are, and what associate's partner's hours are. They can sort them by, which is just what it's about. So hours are really what people will criticize you for if you don't have good hours. That's often what it is.
Now, severely harsh reviews if you don't have significant hours. Again, most people with good hours will get good reviews, but if you have a limited number of hours, you're still getting harsh reviews. If you're not a junior associate and a mid-level associate getting harsh reviews, you may be doing something wrong, or the firm needs to have a lot of work.
But I just want everyone to understand that you're going only to know some things you're doing for the first three to five years, so you're going to make mistakes. And that's not really what it's about. What it's about is your attitude, drive, and accountability to create work, how dedicated the law firm thinks you are, how much they trust you, and frankly, how much they like you.
If I like someone, I will do my best to do an excellent job with them. If I don't, to make sure that they stick around. If I don't, that's that. So sometimes, law firms will give people negative reviews to get them to leave.
