Expertise · Performance intelligence

Four practices, one standard of evidence.

Legal talent management covers everything a firm knows about its people. SRA designs the instrument, runs the cycle, chases participation, processes the data and delivers the reports. Your professional development team approves the questionnaire and reads the findings. Everything in between is ours.

What legal talent management covers

Legal talent management is everything a firm knows, and could know, about its people: how lawyers are evaluated, whether they are engaged, whether laterals take root, and what clients say about the teams serving them. It spans four measurement disciplines that most firms buy separately and read separately.

Legal performance management is the largest of those disciplines. It covers partner reviews, upward reviews, downward reviews, 360-degree feedback, associate and counsel evaluation, and self assessment — the instruments that decide promotion, compensation and who gets developed. SRA calls the whole of itperformance intelligence, because the point is not administering a survey but producing evidence a management committee can act on.

The distinction that matters commercially is custody. A generic HR platform can run any of these instruments. What it cannot do is hold the answers outside the firm, which is what determines whether people answer honestly in the first place.

Dedicated service pages

The three disciplines firms ask us about most, each with its process, deliverables and confidentiality rules set out in full.

Performance & feedback

Upward reviews

Structured, independently administered feedback from associates and staff on the partners who supervise them — designed so people answer honestly and so findings reach partners in a form they can act on.

Performance & feedback

360-degree feedback

The same competency questions asked of everyone who works with a lawyer — peers, supervising partners, direct reports and, where appropriate, clients — split by rater group so the answers can be compared without exposing anyone.

Engagement & employee voice

Engagement surveys

Firm-wide engagement measurement run as a programme rather than an event, so movement is legible between cycles and the readout is the start of the work rather than the end of it.

Performance & feedback

Partner reviews, upward reviews, downward reviews, 360° feedback, associate and counsel evaluation, self assessment and peer interviews. Instruments are drawn from a library refined across more than a million delivered reports and tailored to your competency framework.

Reports arrive at three levels: individual, practice group and firm, each with benchmark context so a score means something on the day it is read. Findings then feed a developmental plan for each reviewee, so the cycle ends in a commitment rather than a document.

Typical cycle

W1–2Instrument design and firm approval
W3Population load, magic-link distribution
W3–5Fielding, automated reminders, participation reporting
W6Data aggregation, threshold suppression
W7–8Report delivery and findings readout

Engagement & employee voice

Firm-wide engagement surveys, pulse reviews, real-time feedback, eNPS, exit surveys and mentoring programme measurement. Run as a programme rather than an event, so movement is legible between cycles.

Only a small minority of employees anywhere strongly agree their employer acts on survey results. We treat the readout as the start of the engagement, not the deliverable.

Engagement score by tenure, Am Law composite

Yr 1Yr 2Yr 3–4Yr 5–6Partner

The trough sits at years three and four, the point at which associates decide whether the path is real. Most firms survey annually and miss it entirely.

Lateral integration

Structured check-ins at 30, 90 and 180 days, integration success measurement, cross-selling audits and sponsor accountability reviews, for individual laterals, groups and mergers.

Lateral hires rarely fail for lack of talent. They fail because introductions never happened, the sponsor moved on, or origination credit was never settled. Each of those is observable early if someone asks.

When integration risk becomes visible

Client introductions not madeMonth 3

Sponsor disengagedMonth 5

Credit & compensation frictionMonth 9

Book fails to followMonth 14

DepartureMonth 30+

Bars show elapsed time to the point the firm typically notices. Check-ins move detection left.

Client feedback

Client voice interviews, matter debriefs, panel and pitch post-mortems, key account health reviews, client NPS and rate perception studies, conducted by an interviewer with no stake in the answer.

General counsel are candid with third parties in a way they rarely are with the relationship partner. Findings return to the firm attributed to the account, not to the individual who said it.

Security & data handling

ISO 27001

Certified information security management system. Certificate number and scope on request.

SOC 2 Type I

Security, availability and confidentiality. Report available to prospective clients under NDA.

GDPR

Processed under a DPA; EU respondent data handled per Article 28. SRA is processor, your firm remains controller.

CCPA

California respondents receive notice at collection. We do not sell or share personal information.

Tell us which cycle is coming up next.

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