I will never forget this night.
My former law firm had a partners’ meeting one night in a hotel suite. The agenda is clear: before dinner, we will discuss case management, and after dinner, marketing and business development. During the first hour, I was criticized for excessive spending on expert witnesses and case preparation. This meeting wasn’t going well.
After dinner, the conversation was much shorter. Sitting around a long table, the senior partners turned in my direction and said, “Whatever he’s doing, everyone should do the same.” About 5 minutes later, the meeting was over. A not so bad ending to a rough night.
Of course, “do what he’s doing” is easier said than done. But this was the first time in my 13 ½ year career at our law firm that I received feedback about my job performance. Don’t get me wrong, I had an amazing experience at the firm and I wouldn’t trade it for anything, but performance reviews were largely ignored. And that needs to change for all of us.
Why Job Reviews Are Important
Law firm owners struggle to give constructive feedback to their team members. As a result, your team has no clue how they are doing. If you don’t consistently review the work of your team members, your team members will say, “I didn’t know you expected this” or “I didn’t know you were unhappy.” Even if you are over-the-top happy about the work of a team member, they are longing for your feedback and there is no better way to show that you care.
Job reviews should be documented in writing. Verbal feedback is quickly forgotten and usually watered down.
You want to make one point clear: you only work with superstars. Your job as the law firm owner is to build a team of superstars. Your “A” players will not want to work with the “B” and “C” players. And if you tolerate average performance, you are lowering the standards of your law firm. Your commitment to excellence should be clear to your team members.
Why Performance Reviews Suck
Why do law firms hate doing performance reviews? Team members hate getting criticized for their job performance. Job reviews are awkward and uncomfortable for all involved, but especially for the team members. And law firm owners hate spending time on job reviews because, for most, it’s the last thing you want to do.
But, as John Morgan, Esq. of Morgan & Morgan, says, “You have to do the Lion’s shit.” This phrase refers to doing the hard things in running a law firm that most law firm owners ignore. Let’s face it, doing a job review of a team member is not on your Top 3 for the day, but is there a solution that empowers your team members and gives them constructive feedback?
The job reviews should be held within the first 90 days for new team members. Longer tenured team members should receive a job review at least once a year and ideally, once every 6 months.
The Format for Job Reviews
#1: PRAISE FIRST: If you have to criticize, first praise their achievements. What has your team member done well? Be effusive in praise when deserved. You might even share the team member’s achievements with the rest of their team.
#2: CONSTRUCTIVE, COMPASSIONATE CRITIQUE: After you’ve listed their accomplishments, be brutally honest about areas in which the team member needs improvement.
“Comradery is dangerous. It makes it hard for people to challenge each other’s work. There is a tendency to not want to throw a colleague under the bus. That needs to be avoided.”
Walter Isaacson, “Elon Musk”
Don’t soft-peddle the concerns about the team member’s performance. Two of the core values of our law firm are HONESTY and TRANSPARENCY and if we are not brutally honest and transparent with our team, our inaction is not aligned with our values.
Step #3: IDENTIFY KEY PERFORMANCE INDICATORS: Key performance indicators measure your law firm’s success vis-a-vis a set of targets and goals. You should be continually monitoring your KPIs.
Step #4: IDENTIFY ROCKS: A rock is one of the 3 to 7 most important things that you must get done in the next 90 days. It is the specific result that you want to achieve by the end of the quarter. A rock is measured by whether you can easily call it “done” or “not done” by the end of the quarter.
“A maniacal sense of urgency is our operating principle.”
Walter Isaacson, “Elon Musk”
Step #5: ASK FOR THEIR FEEDBACK: Ask them to tell you what you can do better and the areas where the firm can improve. Make the job review constructive, not only for your team members but for your law firm.
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This is the job review of our firm’s Chief Operating Officer.
Why We Do Performance Reviews
We do job reviews to help you.
We want to give you feedback in a caring and compassionate way. We want to give you resources that you might not have. We want to show that we care about you. It would be easier to ignore job reviews, but we spend the time doing this because we care about you and your personal development.
You’ve achieved a lot of significant goals for our law firm and first, we want to recognize your achievements.
#1: Just a Few of Your Accomplishments
We’ve achieved a lot of goals that we never would have without you. We just want to take a moment to recognize the impact of your accomplishments for our firm.
ACHIEVEMENT #1: Trade Name for Law Firm: You changed our firm’s name to the trade name, “The New York Injury & Malpractice Law Firm, P.C.” This is something that we’ve wanted to do for 3 years.
ACHIEVEMENT #2: Opened a New Office in the Bronx: You opened a new office in the Bronx and negotiated the lease. Expanding our law firm’s presence into NYC and Long Island has been a goal for a long time. Thank you for making this happen.
ACHIEVEMENT #3: 1,000-plus Google Reviews: Under your leadership, our firm’s Google reviews expanded to over 1,000. This is a major accomplishment and there are only a couple of law firms with more Google reviews. Great work!
ACHIEVEMENT #4: Malpractice Insurance Coverage: You fixed an issue with our professional liability insurance coverage and changed our insurance broker. This was big, very big.
ACHIEVEMENT #5: Shock & Awe Package for Referral Partners: I love the shock & Awe box and the 8-page brochure that you created for our referral partners.
ACHIEVEMENT #6: Hiring of an Off-Shore Paralegal: You hired our firm’s first off-shore remote worker in Brazil. The paralegal has a lot of potential and this will lower our firm’s costs. Nicely done!
ACHIEVEMENT #7: Launching our Firm’s Mass Torts Campaigns: You took leadership in learning about mass torts and retaining a school district as a client for an insulin mass torts case. You continue to use your connections to retain school districts and group health plans for the social media and insulin mass torts cases. Love what you’re doing!
ACHIEVEMENT #8: March Madness Party in 2024: For the first time, our firm had our March Madness party for clients and referral partners. It was a lot of fun and will become an annual event. Thank you for making this happen.
ACHIEVEMENT #9: Assisting with Trial Preparation: Whenever we’ve needed help for trials, you didn’t say “That’s not my job”. You jumped in and did whatever was needed. In a small firm, we all need to do whatever it takes, even if it is not what we were hired to do.
#2: Our Brutally Honest Critique
As one of our firm’s core values, we have to be brutally honest with each other. In my view, you deserve nothing less. There are significant areas where we’d like to see progress.
CRITIQUE #1: Participation in our Daily Huddle: You should be specific about your top 3 priorities at our Daily Huddle. You usually respond that you are busy, but you do not define exactly what you are going to do. This is not a productive use of the Daily Huddle.
CRITIQUE #2: Managing Our Team Members: Your job is to manage our team. That is not my job. By way of example, it is your job to ensure that our team members arrive on time at 8:45 a.m. and no one leaves early before 5 p.m. This is your responsibility.
CRITIQUE #3: Unable to Recite Our Firm’s Core Values: This should be easy, but you struggle to recite our firm’s core values. You should have mastered our core values.
CRITIQUE #4: Failing to Implement Client Surveys: Roughly 4 months ago, you paid $500 for Survey Monkey for client surveys, but we still have not begun using the software.
CRITIQUE #5: Lack of an Onboarding/Training System: There was no systematic training/onboarding for our summer intern or our remote paralegal. As a result, the summer intern frequently did not have any work or know what to do. This needs to be addressed.
CRITIQUE #6: Being Frugal with Firm Money: You hired a remote paralegal in Columbia, but the $3k payment still has not been refunded. You should have called the staffing company to process the refund. Every dollar counts. You should be more careful about the use of our firm’s money.
CRITIQUE #7: Master our Firm’s Costs & Expenses: You should become a master of our firm’s overhead and variable expenses. It is not enough to ask our bookkeeper to tell you what the expenses are. You should dive deeper into the financial numbers.
- What exactly does it cost for payroll every week and month?
- What have we spent year to date on marketing?
- What is our firm’s year-to-date revenue, expenses, and net income?
CRITIQUE #8: Take Ownership: Do not blame others if projects are not getting done, e.g., installing the WordPress plugin, ThriveOvation, on our website. It is your responsibility to ensure that these projects are completed.
#3: Our Key Performance Indicators
You should print a graph showing our firm’s Key Performance Indicators (“KPI”) for our weekly meeting every Friday at 3 p.m. The KPIs consist of the following:
MASS TORTS: # of mass torts signed up.
GOOGLE REVIEWS—BRONX: # of Google reviews for the Bronx office.
TRIAL DATES: # of confirmed trial dates.
ACTIVE LAWSUITS: # of active lawsuits.
REFERRAL PARTNERS: # of referral partners.
WEBSITE VISITORS: # of monthly website visitors.
REVENUE PROJECTION: Projected revenue over the next 12 months.
You should be ready to discuss these KPIs at our weekly meeting.
#4: Rocks to Evaluate Your Performance
Over the next 90 days, this will be your rocks for measuring your performance as our firm’s Chief Operating Officer.
ROCK #1: FIRM FINANCES: Print a graph showing our finances year to date, including revenue, expenses, and net income.
ROCK #2: WEBSITE VISITORS: Print a graph showing the number of our website’s visitors per month, domain rating, and year-to-year comparison, e.g., October 2024 compared to October 2023.
ROCK #3: CONTENT WRITE FOR WEBSITE: Hire a law student to write content for our website. Our website should have at least one new article per day. Create a content creation strategy for our website.
Report the number of new pages to our website and the number of new links added to our website every month.
ROCK #4: RETAIN LABOR LAW/CONSTRUCTION CASE: Create new relationships with the labor union. Go to the local labor unions, introduce yourself, and ask what we can do to help them. Schedule lunch dates with labor union leaders.
Our ROCK is to retain our first Labor Law/accident case within 90 days.
Meet with our digital marketing expert, Ralph Legnini, every 2 weeks to review the results of the digital ad campaign for construction accidents.
ROCK #5: CREATE ONBOARDING SYSTEM FOR NEW TEAM MEMBERS: Develop an onboarding system for new team members.
ROCK #6: TRACK ROCKS FOR EACH TEAM MEMBER: Install a monitor in every office showing the rocks and results.
#5: Your Feedback
We need your feedback. If you don’t have the help or resources that you need, please let us know. Please respond to these 3 questions.
FEEDBACK #1: HELP NEEDED: What can we do to help you?
FEEDBACK #2: RESOURCES NEEDED: What resources can we give to help you?
FEEDBACK #3: IMPROVING OUR LAW FIRM: How can we improve our law firm?