Seyfarth's Associate Talent Management Program Featured in Law360
"Post-Lockstep, Some Firms Beef Up Associate Reviews"

The Law360 article addressed how many top law firms have made headlines recently by instituting merit-based pay for their associates. According to the article, to make the new model work, firms had to overhaul their performance review systems. Seyfarth was one of several firms who discussed their new approach with the publication. Rebecca Mathews, the firm's director of professional development and legal recruiting, told Law360 that Seyfarth set up a committee of lawyers to calibrate review results before promotion decisions get finalized. She explained, “That process of calibration both at the office as well as practice level ensures that we are fair and consistent in applying the competencies whether we're evaluating a corporate associate in Boston or a labor associate in Los Angeles.”

According to the article, Seyfarth's merit-based pay system, announced in February, is structured around 11 competencies that are grouped into three main categories: “delivering legal excellence,” “driving client value” and “building a practice.” Also, each of the three associate tiers contains three separate proficiency levels. The firm bases its decisions on whether an associate should move up a level on the frequency with which an associate performs the skills that make up each competency. At the first level of evaluation, evaluators, who can be partners, counsel and sometimes more senior associates, are presented with descriptions of each of the competencies and asked to state whether and how frequently an associate demonstrates each competency. This stage of the process does involve the classic method of having evaluators check boxes in an online system, but it also allows them to provide additional feedback in a comments section, and most evaluators have been “really, really descriptive,” Rebecca said.

A group called the Lawyers Development Committee, which is composed of about 95 attorneys, each of whom advises four or five associates who they work with on a regular basis, aggregates the data and makes preliminary recommendations that then go through the two-level calibration process. Rebecca noted that the committee was already in place before the firm switched over, which helped ease the transition.