Moving your associate evaluations to a new platform: a transition checklist

What to inventory before you switch

Write each of these down as your firm actually runs it, not as the policy describes it. Where the two differ, the new platform has to match practice.

• Forms and versions. Every evaluation form in use, by class year, role (associate, counsel, staff attorney) and practice group, plus self-evaluation forms. Note which questions are required, which are optional, and which forms changed in the last two cycles.
• Competency framework. The competencies, rating scales and anchor descriptions, and where they are documented. If the definitions exist only inside the form, extract them into a document of their own.
• Reviewer rules. How reviewers are chosen (hours thresholds, matter lists, associate nominations), the minimum and maximum reviewers per associate, who can excuse a reviewer, and how deadline extensions are approved.
• Cycle calendar. Open and close dates for each stage, committee meeting dates, when compensation decisions are made, and any mid-year or first-year checkpoints.
• Reporting outputs committees use. The reports your evaluation and compensation committees actually read, who receives each one, and in what format. Keep a redacted example of each. These are the outputs a new platform has to reproduce.
• Historical records and retention obligations. How many years of evaluations you hold, where, and in what format, and how long your retention policy or any legal hold requires you to keep them. Involve general counsel and records management before deciding what moves and what stays archived.
• Export formats your current vendor provides. What the current system can export: file types, whether ratings and comments come out together, whether reviewer names and dates are preserved, and whether exports are self-serve or by request. Ask for a sample now, not at the end of the contract.
• Contract notice periods. Your current contract’s term, renewal date, notice period for non-renewal, and data return and deletion obligations when it ends. The notice date is often the earliest fixed date in the whole plan.
• Access and permissions. Who can see what today: the PD team, practice group leaders, committee members, the associate. Record it so the same rules can be configured, or deliberately changed.
• Where your lists come from. How reviewee lists and reviewer assignments are produced (HR system, timekeeping, a spreadsheet maintained by hand) and how they reach the current tool. It is easy to overlook, and it is often where the manual work sits.

Run a pilot or parallel cycle

A test on a real but lower-stakes cycle shows more than any demo. Plan it so a problem costs you a week, not a compensation round.

• Choose a lower-risk cycle: a mid-year check-in, one practice group, or one class year, rather than the year-end cycle that feeds compensation.
• Use your real forms and reviewer rules, so the test covers your configuration rather than a vendor template.
• Agree in advance what success means: completion, administrator effort, whether the reports match what committees need, and what reviewers say about the experience.
• If you run old and new systems in parallel, split the population rather than asking reviewers to complete the same evaluation twice.
• Keep the outgoing system’s records intact until the new cycle’s reports have been accepted by the people who use them.

Questions to ask any vendor, including SRA

Ask for answers in writing, and ask to see each one working on your own forms where possible.

1. Can you configure our current forms and competency framework as they are? What would have to change?
2. How are reviewers assigned, and how are changes handled once the cycle has opened?
3. What can our administrators see about who has and has not submitted?
4. How is follow-up with late reviewers handled, and who does it?
5. Can we see our own reports, built from our forms, before we sign?
6. What support is included during implementation and the first cycle, and what costs extra?
7. Who will we work with day to day, and how familiar are they with how law firms evaluate attorneys?
8. Which of the features you have shown are available today, and which are planned?
9. If we leave, what can we export, in what format, and how quickly?
10. What does pricing depend on?

Data-handling questions

Evaluation records are personnel records. These are the questions your general counsel and IT security team will ask, so ask them first.

1. Where is evaluation data stored, and who can access it, including the vendor’s own staff?
2. Which security certifications or audit reports can you share, and under what terms?
3. Who is the controller and who is the processor, and is there a data processing agreement?
4. How long is our data kept after the contract ends, and how is deletion confirmed?
5. Is our data used to train AI models? If AI features exist, what exactly do they do, and who reviews the output?
6. How are permissions set, and is there a record of who viewed or changed an evaluation?
7. If you also run confidential upward reviews for us, how is that data kept separate from attributed evaluations?

SRA's own answer to the certification question: ISO 27001 certified. SOC 2 Type I report available under NDA. For the rest, ask us and we will answer in writing.

A timeline worked back from your next cycle

Start from the date your next cycle opens to reviewers and work backward. How long each stage takes depends on your firm and the vendor, so ask each vendor for their estimate and write it in. Each milestone below has to be finished before the one above it can start.

1. Your next cycle opens to reviewers. The fixed date everything else is planned from.
2. Training and final list checks. Administrators and reviewers trained; reviewee and reviewer lists checked against current staffing.
3. Administrator testing. Your administrators test the configured cycle, with time left to fix what the test finds.
4. Configuration. Forms, competencies, reviewer rules, permissions and reports set up in the new platform.
5. Scope agreed and contract signed. Including which historical records move, in what form, and who does the work.
6. Notice given and exports checked. Notice served on your current vendor by the date your contract requires, and sample exports of historical records requested and checked.
7. Inventory and vendor evaluation. The inventory above completed, and vendors assessed against it.

If the milestones do not fit before your next year-end cycle, one option is to run the year-end cycle on your current system and pilot the new platform on a smaller cycle afterward.