Hogan Lovells ditching annual performance reviews

Hogan Lovells intends to drop annual performance reviews.

The firm is piloting a scheme, 'Pathways', which replaces the single annual review with multiple miniature ones. London Managing Partner Susan Bright said that under Pathways, lawyers would have to obtain at least three pieces of feedback on their performance from partners, colleagues or business services staff at regular points throughout the year, prior to quarterly review meetings.

Bright has called annual grades "distracting" and said that while there would still be an annual meeting, it would be primarily geared towards establishing the next steps in a lawyer's career (otherwise known as printing out the same list you produce every year and ticking through bullet points like "Do more business development" and "Lead more complex transactions" with a bored partner).

500 associates in London, continental Europe and the US and approximately 50 counsel are taking part in the thee month month trial, which concludes at the end of May.

Now Sue can get feedback while supervisors still remember her excellent work.

Now Lucy has to get feedback while supervisors still remember her terrible errors.

Most firms encourage staff to seek regular feedback, but the habit is easy to neglect. In a statement the firm said it hoped that formalising the practice via Pathways would "foster a culture of frequent, and actionable, feedback that helps accelerate the development" of lawyers. That presumably includes the development of supervisors, who were described to RollOnFriday by one associate as currently "too nice to give constructive feedback". Be careful what you wish for.

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Comments

"Bright has called annual reviews a 'distraction'". Not really. They're more of an opportunity for partners to alienate and demotivate associates by forgetting the great things they've done during the year and dwelling on the things that went wrong (strangely they always remember the bad stuff). It also allows them the opportunity to project all of their negativity and stress onto junior lawyers. Oh, and Hogan Lovells finance partners - if you could actually take the time and trouble before the appraisal to read the appraisal document we've been taking hours to complete reviewing the past 12 months of our work, pro bono, BD activity and the "business plan", that'd be great. And we know you never bother to ask about our performance and hurriedly invent "feedback" from unnamed sources - stop it, it's just embarrassing.

You know what, partners really hate appraisals too. You cannot concertina 12 months into a couple of hours - and we need to get rid of the scoring process which makes associates feel like failures or like they are plateauing year-in, year-out. What message does "achieves firm's standards" convey? You're average, just like last year, sorry. Scoring is for maths tests.

Having worked in a firm with regular monthly feedback reviews, I am a big fan. You have a sort of safe space allotted with your line manager to unpack, review and set and monitor goals. Even at a 'friendly' firm with an open door policy and good relations with your supervisor it is definitely a good thing to have an allotted time, regularly, for this sort of thing. Having said that appraisals are also good for taking a step back and giving a wider view. But none of this works unless the people are committed: frequently line managers are not.