Associate evaluations can be stressful – and not just for the associate. Evaluations are critical opportunities to align your associates’ performance with demands from clients, the firm, and the associates themselves. Clients expect your associates to be well-trained, productive, and efficient, while the firm makes a significant investment in each hired associate and wants to see a return on that investment. And, of course, associates themselves have a stake in evaluations: they want to reach their full potential and you need to keep them motivated to do so.
A smart approach to associate evaluations can help address these demands, ensuring associates are producing for clients, contributing to the firm overall objectives, and staying satisfied with their career development at your firm. In this post, we dive into best practices for effective associate evaluations and share how evaluators can overcome common issues that arise.
Running associate evaluations should be a consistent and regular process. If your firm hasn’t yet developed such a method, it’s crucial to create one. Here are a few key considerations:
Each associate brings a unique set of strengths and weaknesses to the table. However, when it comes to substantive or technical skills, performance issues often emerge from a few common problem areas:
Evaluations serve dual purposes. They not only aid in an associate’s professional development but also demonstrate the firm’s commitment to investing time and energy in their associates. Once any performance gaps have been identified, it’s time to effectively address them.
Develop a Targeted Training Cirriculum
Once the areas for improvement have been identified and communicated, the next step involves creating a precise, actionable plan. The supervising attorney, firm leadership, and the associate should agree on a targeted curriculum addressing the substantive challenges identified during the evaluation. Furthermore, the firm should provide the necessary resources to implement this plan and adjust the associate's workload to facilitate their participation. Depending on the associate's requirements, this program could involve targeted skill-building work or adopt a more holistic approach, where a firm foundation is established and subsequently built upon.
For example, if an associate has gaps in understanding the big picture, courses that target foundational knowledge about the relevant practice group will be important. In an M&A practice group, that foundational overview course would typically tackle key terms, terminology, structures, typical players, and motivations behind different deal types.
If the associate has gaps in understanding typical deal processes and key tasks, courses that focus on deal mechanics would be helpful. In a Real Estate practice group, that targeted course will cover what typical real estate deals look like from start to finish, types of approvals needed, and what a junior associate role would be when working on those deals.
While the number of courses can be plentiful as you start to map out substantive gaps with topics, assignments and needed skills, there is only one type of training that produces the best results - experiential training. Lectures are not nearly as effective in developing skills that can be put into real-world practice. Videos, no matter how nice their graphics are, won't do the trick either. (Imagine learning how to swim by watching videos!) Even having issue-spotting workshops, where a presenter reviews deal documents and issues, won't really get the associates there. Associates learn best by doing, engaging in live synchronous instruction, repetitively applying their skills, and receiving ongoing feedback and course-correction. Mentorship also plays a crucial role: the associate should feel that someone is looking out for them, advocating for their needs, and holding them accountable to the firm’s expectations.
Of course, learning by doing real client work is experiential training and can help build the needed skills, but that is way too expensive. Clients won't pay for a junior associate training on their dime, and, as a result, a supervising lawyer has to typically write that time off, correct mistakes, and find time to give real time feedback to a junior associate in the middle of a transaction.
Instead, learning by doing simulated client work (i.e., mock deals and transactions) is the better way to go. This involves taking past client deal documents and scenarios and turning them into simulated deal assignments. To get the most out of the learning exercise, it’s important to make the fact patterns and documents as close to the real world experience as possible. This means that the assignments must be imperfect in substance and form. Like a puzzle, there should be missing client facts that the associate needs to identify, business issues, loopholes and conflicts. Lots of gray areas that require analytical thinking. Like a workout, if the assignment does not make the associate sweat a little, it wont work.
This type and level of training and oversight requires time, commitment, and human resources. In this current environment, however, it may be difficult for firms to allocate such a significant endeavor – especially for foundational level training across all key practice areas. If this is the case at your firm, consider outsourcing foundational content training, skill-building, or mentoring to a trusted training partner. This approach can ease the strain of developing internal training programs and provide everything you need under one roof.
AltaClaro is a preferred and trusted solution for law firms that recognize the value of personalized experiential associate training in maximizing their associates' potential. Our online boot camps enable attorneys to harness technology and efficiently acquire practical legal skills. This hybrid format incorporates mock transactions and live feedback sessions with experienced practitioners.
Our extensive course catalog covers beginner to intermediate levels across various topics, including Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A), Corporate, Capital Markets, Technology Transactions, Real Estate, and Lending Transactions. AltaClaro's cutting-edge learning technology platform also facilitates monitoring and tracking of training engagement and performance, so you can see exactly how your training is driving better results for your associates as well as your ROI.
New associates crave reassurance and support, and providing regular feedback is a great way to show his commitment from the firm. For this feedback to matter, however, it needs to be accompanied by opportunities to change and improve. Evaluations that result in personalized training and mentoring for each associate is a crucial step toward fostering an effective and engaged associate cohort. For help turning your associate evaluations into opportunities for growth, contact us.