Service · Performance & feedback
Upward reviews for US law firms
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.
Who this is for
- Managing partners and management committees
- Chief People Officers and Directors of Professional Development
- Firms running upward feedback for the first time, or replacing an in-house process
The question an associate is really answering is who will see this
When a fourth-year associate is asked to assess the partner who staffs their matters, the honest answer to "who will see this" determines the quality of everything that follows. If the answer is "someone at my firm", the feedback will be diplomatic and of little use.
That is a structural problem, not a communications problem. It is not solved by reassuring people in the invitation email, and it is not solved by a generic HR platform that holds the data inside the firm. It is solved by moving custody of the responses outside the firm entirely.
How a cycle runs
SRA designs the instrument, runs the cycle, chases participation, processes the data and delivers the reports. Your team approves the questionnaire and reads the findings.
- Weeks 1–2Instrument design, competency mapping and firm approval of the questionnaire.
- Week 3Population load and distribution by individual secure link.
- Weeks 3–5Fielding, automated reminders and live participation reporting to the firm.
- Week 6Data aggregation and threshold suppression. Free-text comments reviewed for identifiability.
- Weeks 7–8Report delivery at individual, practice group and firm level, then a findings readout.
What you receive
Individual partner reports
Each reviewee receives their own results with benchmark context, so a score means something on the day it is read.
Practice group rollups
Group-level patterns where response volumes clear the reporting threshold.
Firm-level findings
Themes across the partnership, with the supervisory behaviors that separate the strongest reviewers from the weakest.
Developmental plans
Findings feed a plan for each reviewee, so the cycle ends in a commitment rather than a document.
Readout to leadership
A working session with the people who designed the instrument and read the results.
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.
Disclosure required by law. SRA does not identify a respondent to your firm. Identity is disclosed only where the law requires it. Where the law permits, SRA gives notice before disclosing, and discloses only what is legally required.
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.
On upward reviews
All insights →Upward Review Questions for Law Firms: 30 Examples
Thirty questions associates can answer about the partners who supervise them, grouped by what each set is for, with the ones worth avoiding and why.
21 October 2026
Who Actually Sees Your Firm's Upward Review Data? (2026)
Associates often ask who sees their upward review answers. Here is how access works at each level, and how to explain it before a survey opens.
25 September 2026
Partner Upward Reviews: A Case Study in Resetting How a Firm Supervises
The question the managing partner asked was which partners were costing the firm associates. Nobody in the room could answer it, and the firm had been running its own engagement survey for four years.
13 September 2026
Can Generic HR Software Handle Upward Reviews at Law Firms?
Generic HR software can run upward reviews technically — but at US law firms the data lives in firm systems, and that's why associates don't tell the truth. Her
12 June 2026
What questions should a law firm ask in an upward review?
50 law firm-specific upward review questions across six categories. Use them to evaluate partner supervision, feedback quality, and associate development.
8 April 2026
What is an upward review at a law firm? A practical guide
Upward reviews let associates evaluate partners confidentially. Learn how law firms use them to fix retention problems and develop better supervisors.
6 April 2026
Performance & 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 Performance & feedback.
What you can tailor
- Who is reviewed, and who reviews them
- Competencies and questions
- An annual cycle, or another cadence you agree
- Who sees which report
What an agreed scope covers
An engagement covers the review types, the populations and the cycle you agree. Adding a review type or a population is a change of scope rather than something a practice includes by default.
These are not one instrument. A downward evaluation is attributed to the partner who wrote it, because the associate needs to know whose judgment it is. An upward review is confidential and reported only above an agreed threshold, because an associate assessing the partner who staffs their matters answers honestly only when identification is impossible. Both are explained to participants before they answer.
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.