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Are stub year performance reviews real and what's the point of them?

Had my first one and it felt like listening to puff piece movie reviews. Won't say exactly what I heard for obvious reasons, but it was stuff like you're doing great, good work, associates like working with you, without any indication of how to improve or what I'm doing wrong (maybe nothing, which makes me wonder if first year assignments are as made up/easy as summer associate ones). Or are people in biglaw just reluctant to criticize subordinates on paper and just say good things for your whole career until there's a concerted effort to push you out, at which point reviews start to become more harsh?

Pretty normal

if they're mostly from partners, that's not really a surprise because you're fairly insulated from working with them directly as a stub

my stub year reviews were pretty fluff as well, but one senior lawyer (one of my favorites to work with) gave some good and fair criticism on some small things (i.e. communicating with more confidence during internal calls), in addition to the mostly boilerplate puff. I appreciated it a lot tbh.

juniors are relatively fungible by nature though. Until you start taking on more and more responsibility it's probably hard to give meaningful feedback when most of our job is just grind through xyz and be available, unless you are the rare exception in a good or bad way

They only matter if they are bad. My first firm didn't even break out juniors' ratings - everyone got the same rating unless you were like about to be fired, which means you egregiously messed up.

While the actual substance of your review doesn’t matter (unless it’s bad), the reputation you start building in your stub year 100% matters and will follow you for the rest of your time at the firm. A lot of junior associates don’t realize how quickly your reputation starts to form and how hard it can be to change once you get more senior.