Service · Client feedback

Client feedback interviews for law firms

Independent interviews with your clients about the relationship, the team and the work, conducted by someone whose fees do not depend on the answer being flattering.

Who this is for

  • Managing partners and heads of client relationships
  • Chief Marketing and Business Development Officers
  • Firms facing a panel review, a renewal, or a relationship they cannot read

Relationship partners rarely hear the whole truth from their own clients

A general counsel asked by their relationship partner how things are going is not only answering a question. They are managing a relationship they may need next quarter, weighing whether candor is worth the friction. The answer that comes back is usually warm, usually general, and usually late.

That is not evasiveness. It is the predictable result of asking someone to critique a person they depend on, to that person's face. The same conversation with an independent interviewer produces something different: specifics, comparisons with other firms on the panel, and the concerns raised before they become a decision.

Firms typically discover the gap at the panel review, when the feedback finally arrives in a form nobody can soften.

How a cycle runs

SRA designs the interview guide, approaches your clients, conducts the interviews and reports back. Your team selects the relationships and approves the questions.

  1. Weeks 1–2Relationship selection, interview guide design and firm approval of the question set.
  2. Week 3Client outreach and scheduling, positioned as a firm-commissioned independent review.
  3. Weeks 3–6Interviews conducted by an SRA researcher, typically 30 to 45 minutes, by video or phone.
  4. Week 7Analysis across relationships, with attributed and unattributed findings separated.
  5. Week 8Report and readout to the relationship partners and firm leadership.

What you receive

Per-relationship findings

What this client values, what they would change, and where the firm sits against the rest of their panel.

Attribution handled explicitly

Clients choose what is attributed and what is reported without their name. Both reach the firm; only one carries a label.

Cross-client themes

Patterns across the portfolio: service model, responsiveness, pricing, the strength of the bench behind the relationship partner.

Risk flags

Relationships where the client's language has shifted, surfaced before the renewal rather than at it.

Readout to relationship partners

A working session, including the findings that are uncomfortable to hear and easy to omit.

What changes

Asked by the firm

Asked independently

The relationship partner asks the client how things are going.
An independent interviewer asks, and the client answers a different question.
The answer is warm, general, and arrives late.
Specifics, and comparisons with the rest of the panel.
Concerns surface at the panel review.
Concerns surface before they become a decision.
What may be repeated to the firm is left ambiguous.
Clients choose what is attributed. Both reach the firm; only one carries a name.

Confidentiality

How the data is held, in practice

The rules below are the reason participation holds and the reason findings are worth acting on. They are enforced by where the data sits, not by policy alone.

Read the confidentiality pledge →

Independent custody

Response data never enters your firm's systems in an identifying way. SRA holds and processes it as an independent party, under a data processing agreement in which your firm remains the controller.

Suppression thresholds

The reporting threshold is set for your firm before the cycle opens, against the size of each population being surveyed. Below it, a cut is reported in aggregate or withheld entirely rather than estimated.

Comments reviewed before release

Free-text responses are reviewed for identifiability, so no one can be recognized by role, matter or phrasing.

Certified handling

ISO 27001 certified. SOC 2 Type I available under NDA. GDPR Article 28 and CCPA aligned, with SRA as processor and your firm as controller.

Why firms use an independent party

Every figure below is recorded in an evidence register with its definition, source and period. Illustrative figures used elsewhere in the design are excluded here by design.

35 years serving US law firms
Years of continuous operation, 1991 to present.
100+ elite Am Law firms as clients
Count of distinct Am Law-ranked firms that have engaged SRA. Cumulative, not concurrent.
100,000+ confidential surveys conducted
Count of individual survey responses collected.
1,000,000+ performance reports delivered
Count of individual performance reports produced and delivered.
ISO 27001 certified
Certified information security management system. Certificate number and scope available on request.

Client feedback

This is one program inside a broader practice

This is a workflow your firm shapes, not a fixed product. Firms run it for the populations, cadence and reporting they agree, and give the program whatever name suits them. It sits inside Client feedback.

What you can tailor

  • Which accounts are covered
  • Who at the client is approached
  • Interview guide or survey instrument
  • Whether a partner joins the conversation, and how often it runs

What an agreed scope covers

An engagement covers the accounts, the number of interviews and the cadence you agree. Extending to more accounts or a shorter cycle is a change of scope.

Clients are interviewed by name and know the firm commissioned the work. That is what makes them willing to be specific. What is attributed back to the firm, and what is reported only as a portfolio theme, is agreed with the client before the interview.

How to run it

Run with your team

Use Artemis to configure and run the agreed program, with onboarding and standard support. Your team owns administration and follow-through.

Explore Artemis →

Have SRA manage the program

Agree the design, administration, analysis and readouts you want SRA to provide. Your firm retains the decisions and actions that follow.

Discuss a managed program →

Running one program in Artemis does not commit the rest of the firm to the same arrangement. You can choose differently for different work.

Tell us which relationships you cannot read