Feedback
Every summer associate
wants to know how well they are doing. It is a natural human emotional need.
Former New York Mayor Ed Koch used to call out to reporters “How am I doin’?”
He had to wait four years for an answer. Your answer will come at the end of
the summer. All feedback systems
depend on structure, forms, follow through and a decidedly unreliable human
element. Every spring, hiring partners and recruiting coordinators redesign reporting
lines, meeting schedules, review forms, and many other ways to coerce their
lawyers to put pen to paper and write reviews. As a hiring partner I tried
systems, humor, cajoling, requests just short of Fed. R. Civ. P. 30 and 45, and
sitting down in a lawyer’s office and filibustering until they completed the
darn form.
The
top priority of lawyers is client service. All of the administrative ‘stuff’ of
the law firm comes last. You will understand this better when you are working
50-60 hours a week for clients and your paper and electronic in-boxes are
jammed with -- time reports, bills, advance sheets, conflict of interest
reports, memos from the library about lost books, reminders about CLE programs
that you are too tired to attend, etc. The summer associate evaluation form
falls to the bottom of the stack.
That
a lawyer is late filling out the form or is superficial in her comments does
not mean that they do not care. It means that their life is jammed. A vast
majority of them are well-intentioned and in a perfect world would provide more
and detailed feedback.
Firms
generally design systems to provide feedback. A typical system calls for the
recruiting coordinator or team assignment coordinator to send an evaluation
form to the lawyers for whom you worked after an assignment is over. The form
will have a series of boxes where various aspects of the assignment and your
performance are evaluated on a scale. The bottom half of the page will has room
for written comments. Most firms will also designate a lawyer in each
department to speak with the partner who supervised your assignment to learn a
bit more about your performance.
These
forms are collected and reviewed and you will be given reviews either
periodically during the summer or at the end of the summer. A partner on the
hiring committee or summer committee will be assigned to sit down with you and
discuss your performance. In a perfect world, every lawyer would talk to you
about your work after every project concluded. That is not likely to happen.
Most of us will have to listen to the voice of the firm — if our department
keeps coming back to us with increasingly demanding and interesting assignments
we’re probably doing pretty well. If everyone else is busy and we’re not, there
is a problem.
While
this summer is a unique interval at the beginning of your career, it is just
another summer for the partner with whom you are working. If you understand
feedback from the firm’s point of view it will decrease your blood pressure and
increase your enjoyment of the summer. If not, rent A Few Good Men, and listen to Nicholson’s peroration on handling
the truth. If you are still in a quandary, a “Code Red” can be arranged.