Every review cycle starts with a list of who is being reviewed and who reviews them. At most firms that list is an export from the HR system, emailed to whoever runs the cycle, corrected by hand and loaded into the review tool. From the day it is exported, the list starts to drift: people join and leave, go on leave, change manager and move office. On the attorney side the changes are mostly laterals and departures. On the staff side they also include moves between departments, which change the reviewer as well as the person being reviewed.
Connecting the HR system to the review platform replaces that copy with the record itself.
The HR systems law firms run
Artemis by SRA connects with Workday, UKG, ADP and several others. The table covers the main HR platforms in US use and what to check in each before a review cycle relies on it.
| System | What to check for a review cycle |
|---|---|
| Workday HCM | Supervisory organizations usually carry the reporting line. Check whether practice group is held there or in a custom field. |
| UKG Pro | Formerly UltiPro; UKG was formed in 2020 from Ultimate Software and Kronos. Check whether class year or level sits in a standard or a custom field. |
| ADP Workforce Now and ADP Vantage HCM | Check that the manager field is maintained for every employee, not only for those in payroll approval chains. |
| Dayforce | Formerly Ceridian; the company took the Dayforce name in 2024. |
| Oracle HCM Cloud and SAP SuccessFactors | Check how the firm’s legal entities map to offices, since reports are often grouped by office. |
| BambooHR, Paylocity, Paycom | Built for smaller organizations. Check that the manager field is filled in for every employee. |
If your firm runs a system not named here, ask. The connection is configured for each firm during implementation, and what matters is which fields the system holds and how well they are kept up to date.
What a review cycle needs from the HR system
- An employee identifier that is stable across years, so one cycle can be compared with the next.
- Name and work email.
- Title, job family and level. For attorneys, class year, wherever the firm keeps it.
- Department or practice group, and office.
- Manager, or reporting line.
- Hire date, employment status, any leave of absence, and termination date.
That is enough to decide who is eligible, who reviews whom on the staff side, and how results are grouped in reports.
What to leave out
Leave out compensation, Social Security numbers, dates of birth, home addresses and benefits data. None of them is needed to run the cycle, and each one widens what a breach would expose.
Demographic data is a separate decision. Some firms check whether ratings differ by gender or race, and that analysis needs the fields. General counsel should approve them first, results should be reported only in aggregate, and a full HR extract should not bring them in by default.
What the connection changes
Eligibility follows the record. The firm sets the rules once: hired after a cutoff date, excluded or given a shortened review; on leave for most of the period, deferred; given notice, removed. The HR system then decides who is in the cycle, instead of somebody checking a spreadsheet against a list of departures.
Manager changes reach the cycle. When an employee moves teams in the middle of a cycle, the review can follow the new reporting line or stay with the manager who saw most of the year, according to whichever rule the firm set before the cycle opened.
Leavers drop out of reviewer lists. A reviewer who left in week three no longer holds up a review that is waiting for them.
Laterals and new joiners arrive on time. A lateral who joins in the spring is in the system for a mid-year check-in without anyone remembering to add them.
Attorneys and staff draw on different sources
For staff reviews, the HR system usually supplies the reviewer as well as the person being reviewed: the manager in the reporting line is the person who writes the review. See staff and business-services evaluations for how those cycles run.
For attorneys, the HR system supplies the population, class year and office, but it does not know who worked with whom. That comes from the billing system, which we cover in connecting your billing system to associate, staff and partner reviews. An associate evaluation cycle typically draws on both: the HR system for who is eligible, and the time records for who reviews them. Paralegals who record time sit between the two, with a manager from the HR system and attorney reviewers from the billing data.
Whether anything goes back to the HR system
The connection’s first job is bringing records into the review platform. Sending anything back, such as review completion status or a final rating onto the employee’s HR record, is a decision about where the firm’s record of performance should live. Some firms want the rating in the HR system beside compensation. Others prefer the full review to stay in the review platform, where access is narrower. Settle it during scoping, with HR and general counsel together, before the connection is built.
Access, confidentiality and reporting thresholds
Staff and attorney evaluations are attributed personnel records. Access in Artemis is set by role, so a review reaches only the people the firm designates. SRA is ISO 27001 certified, and its SOC 2 Type I report is available under NDA.
Confidential programs need one more check. In an upward review or engagement survey, results are reported only for groups above an agreed size. Every HR field used to cut the results, such as office, level or tenure band, makes the groups smaller. Adding office to a practice group cut can push many of the resulting groups below the threshold. Decide which HR fields a confidential report may use before the cycle opens, not after the results arrive.
Setting it up
- Name the owner on the HR side. This is usually the HRIS team, who know which fields are kept current and which have not been touched since the system was installed.
- Map the fields. Agree which HR field becomes practice group, level and manager in the review platform, especially where the firm uses custom fields.
- Test on a known population. Load one office or department and compare it with the list HR would have produced by hand. Differences usually point to stale manager fields or missing termination dates.
- Reconcile before opening. Run an eligibility report a week before the cycle opens and have HR sign it off.
SRA runs associate evaluations, staff evaluations and partner upward reviews for US law firms on Artemis, connected to the HR system the firm already uses. Tell us which HR system you run and we will walk through the field mapping with your own data.
Sources: Dayforce, “Ceridian Becomes Dayforce”, February 2024; UKG company history. Checked 1 November 2026.