An attorney 360-degree review asks the same competency questions of everyone who works with one lawyer, split by rater group so the answers can be compared. Survey Research Associates (SRA) has designed these instruments for US law firms since 1991, and a workable legal 360 runs to roughly 25 to 35 rated questions plus two or three open fields. Below is a full question bank organized by rater group, the rating scale that produces usable data, and the questions worth leaving out.
How should the questions be organized?
By rater group, not by competency.
The same underlying competency needs different wording depending on who is answering. Asking a partner and a first-year associate to rate "delegation effectiveness" produces two answers that look comparable and are not, because the partner is judging outcome and the associate is judging experience.
Four groups, each seeing a subset:
The self set matters more than firms expect. The gap between how an attorney rates themselves and how each group rates them is usually the most diagnostic output of the whole exercise.
What should partners and supervisors be asked?
- Applies sound legal judgment on complex or ambiguous matters
- Produces work requiring minimal substantive revision
- Identifies and escalates matter risk before it becomes a client issue
- Manages matter scope and communicates when it changes
- Meets deadlines without needing to be chased
- Handles direct client contact appropriately for their seniority
- Understands the commercial context of the matter, not only the legal question
- Delegates appropriately to more junior attorneys and staff
- Develops the people working under them
- Contributes to business development in ways appropriate to their level
- Represents the firm well externally
- Responds constructively to feedback
What should peers be asked?
- Is reliable when we work on the same matter
- Shares information rather than holding it
- Handles disagreement professionally
- Carries a fair share of non-billable and firm-building work
- Is someone I would want on a difficult matter
- Maintains professionalism under deadline pressure
- Supports colleagues across practice groups, not only within their own
- Is straightforward about what they do not know
What should associates and junior staff be asked?
This is the section most generic 360 tools handle worst, because it needs to describe supervision as the person receiving it experiences it.
- Gives me enough context to do the work well, not just enough to complete a task
- Is available when a matter needs a decision
- Gives feedback in time for me to act on it
- Gives feedback that is specific rather than general
- Allocates work in a way that develops my practice
- Explains why the work matters to the client
- Treats me with respect, including under pressure
- Credits my contribution to others
- Is someone I would choose to work with again
- Helps me understand what progression at this firm requires
What open questions should be included?
Two or three, no more. Long comment sections reduce completion rates and produce less usable text.
- What should this attorney continue doing?
- What is the single most useful change this attorney could make?
An optional third, worth including where the firm intends to act on the results: What does this attorney need from the firm in order to do that?
Worried your practice groups are too small to run this safely? Our attorney 360-degree feedback service tests group sizes against reporting thresholds at the design stage, before fieldwork begins.
What rating scale should be used?
A five-point behavioral frequency scale, plus an explicit "not enough exposure to rate" option.
Frequency scales ask how often a behavior occurs rather than how good someone is at it. "Rarely, sometimes, usually, almost always, consistently" produces more accurate answers than "poor to excellent," because raters can recall behavior more reliably than they can calibrate a quality judgment.
The "not enough exposure" option is not optional. Without it, raters guess, and guesses are indistinguishable from observations once the scores are averaged.
Which questions should be left out?
Anything about personality. "Is a natural leader" cannot be observed, cannot be acted on and invites bias.
Anything the rater cannot see. Associates should not rate business development. Partners should not rate how the attorney treats junior staff unless they have observed it.
Anything already measured elsewhere. Billable hours, realization and origination live in your practice management system. A 360 that asks people to estimate them adds noise.
Compensation-adjacent questions. Once raters believe their answers affect pay, they manage them.
Demographic questions attached to individual responses. In a small practice group these can identify a respondent on their own.
How small is too small for a 360?
This is the question firms discover too late.
In a twelve-person tax group, a partner reading their report can often infer who said what. In a four-person group it is not a puzzle at all. A rater category should be reported only if at least [CONFIRM: n] responses came from it, and below that the results should be folded into a broader category or suppressed outright.
Test group sizes against your reporting thresholds before fieldwork rather than at reporting. Sometimes the answer is a wider rater pool. Sometimes it is that a 360 is the wrong instrument for that attorney this cycle, and it is far better to know that before the budget is spent.
Frequently asked questions
How many questions is too many? Above roughly 40 rated items, completion rates fall and later answers get less considered. Between 25 and 35 plus two open fields is the workable range.
Should the attorney choose their own raters? They can propose additions, but the core pool should come from evidenced working relationships. Self-nomination produces friendly panels that tell you very little.
Can we use our existing competency framework? Yes, and you should. Map the questions to your framework rather than importing a generic one, so results connect to the evaluation criteria your firm already uses.
How is a 360 different from an upward review? An upward review runs in one direction, associates on partners, usually across the whole partnership. A 360 covers every direction for one attorney, usually for a defined population such as partnership candidates.
Should 360 results feed into promotion decisions? Development first. Firms that use 360 data for promotion decisions in year one tend to see participation and candor drop in year two.
Build a 360 your attorneys will answer honestly
SRA has designed confidential 360-degree feedback programs for US law firms since 1991, including rater pool design tested against anonymity thresholds. We will share an anonymized sample report showing how rater-group reporting works at your firm's size.
Contact us · Survey Research Associates, Inc. · 30 Wall Street, 8th Floor, New York, NY 10005 · 800-523-8350
Related reading
- Why Does Your Law Firm Need 360-Degree Reviews?
- Why Does Your Law Firm Need Upward Reviews? (explains how the two instruments differ)
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