Legal talent management · Serving law firms since 1991
Performance reviews built for every role in your law firm.
Run associate and counsel evaluations, non-attorney staff performance reviews and confidential partner upward reviews with a team that understands how law firms work. SRA combines law-firm-specific expertise with Artemis by SRA, our performance management platform.
- 35 years serving US law firms
- ISO 27001 certified
- SOC 2 Type I report available under NDA
Performance evaluations for your attorneys, staff and firm leaders.
Different roles need different evaluation workflows. We help firms run attorney reviews, business-services staff evaluations and confidential partner feedback, whether you're replacing a legacy platform or managing a firmwide cycle.
Associates & counsel
Associate & Counsel Evaluations
Coordinate self-evaluations, supervising-attorney feedback, reviewer assignments, reminders, approvals and reporting. Built for practice groups, seniority levels and review cycles with many evaluators per associate.
Explore associate evaluations →Staff & business services
Staff & Business-Services Evaluations
Performance reviews for paralegals, legal assistants, administrative teams and business-services professionals in HR, finance, IT, marketing and operations. Role-specific competencies, manager reviews, self-assessments and reporting by department.
Explore staff evaluations →Partners
Partner Upward Reviews
Collect candid, confidential feedback on partners, with SRA's independent administration, reporting thresholds and law-firm-specific methodology.
Explore upward reviews →Leaders
Leadership 360s & Development
Help partners and practice leaders identify strengths, development priorities and the changes in supervisory behavior that matter most to their teams.
Explore 360 feedback →Attorney & staff evaluations
One firm, different review needs, one experienced partner.
Attorney reviews often need feedback from several supervising lawyers, competencies that vary by class year, and committee reporting. Staff reviews need department-specific competencies, manager reviews and HR-led calibration. Artemis runs each with its own forms and reporting rather than forcing every role into one template, and SRA can help administer firmwide cycles.
Attorney and staff evaluations are attributed: reviewers are named to the firm. Anonymity and reporting thresholds apply to upward reviews and confidential surveys, described below.
Fit the role
Configure different forms, competencies, eligibility and evaluation groups for attorneys and for staff, around how your firm already reviews each.
Reduce manual follow-up
Automated reminders go to reviewers with evaluations outstanding, and PD and HR administrators can see assignments and progress in one place.
Prepare decisions with better information
Submitted feedback comes together in reports an evaluation committee can use. AI assistance for drafting and consistency checks on written feedback is available, and a person reviews every result.
Why independence works
A generic HR platform can run an upward review. It cannot hold the data outside your firm.
When a fourth-year associate is asked to assess the partner who staffs their matters, the question they are really answering is who will see this. If the honest answer is “someone at my firm,” the feedback you receive will be diplomatic and of little use.
SRA holds response data as an independent party. Results are suppressed below a minimum response threshold, and comments are reviewed before release for anything that would identify the writer by role, matter or phrasing. That structure is why participation holds and why findings are worth acting on.
Structural anonymity
Responses never enter your firm's systems in an identifying way. SRA holds the data as an independent party, as processor under a data processing agreement. Identity is disclosed only where the law requires it.
Suppression thresholds
Small practice groups are reported in aggregate or not at all. We publish the math behind the threshold.
Data aggregation
Responses are compiled and reported in the aggregate, so the firm does not see who wrote what.
Certified handling
ISO 27001 certified. SOC 2 Type I report available under NDA. GDPR Article 28 and CCPA aligned.
A legal-sector partner, not a generic HR vendor.
Since 1991, SRA has worked with law firms on feedback, evaluation and development programs, for professional development teams and for HR and business-services departments. That work turns on what firms deal with every cycle: confidentiality, practice-group dynamics, reviewer participation and how people decisions are made.
Upward review results
Participation when SRA administers the upward review
Median participation across SRA review cycles, against the same firms' in-house administered baseline of 54%. Upward-review cycles only.
Upward reviews: associate participation, median, 2023–2025
Documented results, anonymized at client request
Upward review
+33 pts
Associate participation in the upward review after moving administration to SRA, at a 900-lawyer national firm. Comment volume rose 2.4×.
Lateral integration
−41%
Third-year lateral partner departures across two hiring cohorts, after 30/90/180-day integration check-ins with sponsor accountability.
Leadership development
50%
Increase in leadership development take-up by partners at an Am Law 50 firm, once upward review findings entered the compensation conversation.
Each figure comes from a single client engagement, measured against that client's own baseline before SRA took over administration. Not aggregated across clients.
On firm strategy
“SRA's findings are the evidence base we bring into the annual compensation discussion. When the management committee weighs a partner's contribution, we can put supervisory behavior and team engagement on the table alongside the financials, and defend where the numbers came from.”
On performance & coaching
“The reports give me something specific to coach against. Instead of telling a partner the feedback was mixed, I can walk them through where they sit against the firm and what two behaviors to change. Those conversations used to be defensive; now they are practical.”
Comments shared with permission and anonymized at client request.
How SRA runs a review →The technology behind a simpler review process.
Artemis brings evaluation setup, role-specific forms, reviewer workflows, progress tracking and reporting together in one place, for attorneys and non-attorney staff. Use it with your internal team, or add SRA's hands-on administration and program expertise. It is the same platform either way.
Artemis Software
Your firm owns the review process and uses Artemis to configure and run its own cycles.
Artemis + SRA Managed
SRA works with your firm on configuration, administration, follow-up and reporting under an agreed service scope.
Other solutions
All areas of expertise →Engagement surveys
Firm-wide engagement measurement run as a program, so movement is visible between cycles.
Lateral integration
Check-ins at 30, 90 and 180 days that show whether a lateral partner hire is working while there is time to act.
Client feedback
Independent interviews with your clients about the relationship, the team and the work.
Exit surveys
Exit research run in the notice period and reported by supervising partner and practice group.
Research & practical guidance
The SRA Law Firm Feedback Benchmark reads your results against participating Am Law firms rather than against last year. It comes from the same confidential survey programs SRA has run for law firms since 1991.
Benchmark 2025
Where firms lose associates
Engagement items ranked by the gap between their importance to associate retention and their score across Am Law firms. The largest gaps are supervisory, not financial.
Request the benchmark →Importance-to-retention minus mean score, indexed, across participating Am Law firms, 2023–2025.
Framework
Why lateral integration fails
Six failure modes, the month each one becomes visible, and the check-in question that surfaces it early.
Guide
What makes an upward review effective
Instrument design, threshold math, and how results should reach a partner for behavior to actually change.
Framework
How small is too small for a 360
A worked table by practice group size, and four options when a group falls below the anonymity threshold.
Guide
From results to action in ninety days
Why engagement data stalls at the readout, and the governance that turns findings into decisions.
Insights
All articles →How small can a practice group be before a 360 stops being anonymous?
A worked table by group size, and four options when a group falls below the reporting threshold.
Why don't engagement survey results lead to change?
Six reasons law firm engagement data stalls between the readout and a decision, and how to fix each one.
What is structural anonymity in a performance review?
Three tests a firm can apply, why associates distrust third parties too, and how to prove the model to them.
About SRA
Founded on Wall Street in 1991. Still at 30 Wall Street.
Survey Research Associates has designed and administered confidential performance and engagement programs for US law firms since 1991. The work has stayed the same work: define what to ask, collect the answers as an independent party, and report them to the people who can act on them.
SRA has served 100+ Am Law firms since 1991. The instruments have been rebuilt many times as firms changed. The arrangement underneath them has not. For upward reviews and confidential surveys, responses are held outside the firm, results are withheld below a threshold agreed before fielding, and written comments are reviewed for identifiability before anyone at the firm reads them.
That holds whether a program runs as an SRA cycle or throughArtemis. Custody of the responses sits outside the firm either way, which is the reason participation holds and the reason the findings are worth acting on.
Read the methodology →- Founded
- 1991, on Wall Street
- Offices
- 30 Wall Street, 8th Floor
New York, NY 10005
Planning an attorney or staff evaluation cycle?
Tell us how your PD or HR team runs reviews today. We'll discuss what should stay the same, what could improve, and whether Artemis and SRA are a good fit.
Planning a partner upward review instead?Discuss a confidential upward review