Bad Summer Evaluation Forum

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Bad Summer Evaluation

Post by Anonymous User » Wed Jul 26, 2023 5:31 am

I am a BigLaw summer associate, and throughout the summer I have received satisfactory reviews on my work product. During my mid summer evaluation, some areas of improvement were identified, and it was conveyed to me that I improved upon those areas. I had had satisfactory reviews or reviews that exceeded expectations. Just recently, however, I submitted a work assignment and received very negative feedback on it. The assigning attorney conveyed that it was unsatisfactory due to not including things in the assignment that they felt needed to be included. Now, I am worried about being no offered and not having a job going into my 3L. I hear that it is hard to get no offered, but that bad work product is definitely a reason to not be asked to return. I suppose I'm just looking to hear from others who may be able to provide some insight.

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Re: Bad Summer Evaluation

Post by Anonymous User » Wed Jul 26, 2023 8:15 am

Anonymous User wrote:
Wed Jul 26, 2023 5:31 am
I am a BigLaw summer associate, and throughout the summer I have received satisfactory reviews on my work product. During my mid summer evaluation, some areas of improvement were identified, and it was conveyed to me that I improved upon those areas. I had had satisfactory reviews or reviews that exceeded expectations. Just recently, however, I submitted a work assignment and received very negative feedback on it. The assigning attorney conveyed that it was unsatisfactory due to not including things in the assignment that they felt needed to be included. Now, I am worried about being no offered and not having a job going into my 3L. I hear that it is hard to get no offered, but that bad work product is definitely a reason to not be asked to return. I suppose I'm just looking to hear from others who may be able to provide some insight.
Who gave you the feedback? I got a bad review from a corporate partner in a different office. I was in lit. And the managing partner basically called me in and pretty much said the other partner was a jerk and that he couldn’t believe she put that crap in a review. I think it depends a lot. Turns out the person who gave me a bad review is known to be the worst and basically can’t even get associates to work for her. I guess she decided to assign kind of real work to random summers who have no idea what to do. Apparently she then gave multiple summers bad reviews.

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Re: Bad Summer Evaluation

Post by Anonymous User » Wed Jul 26, 2023 8:28 am

When I was a summer, I received a really rough review from a partner who basically said that they didn't think I was cut out for biglaw work. I was certain that I was going to get no offered based on the tone of my review, but I still received an offer and have been a normal, well-regarded associate at that same firm for a few years now. It still really messed with my head for a bit, especially when I returned as a full associate the next year.

Generally speaking, I think being no offered just due to work product only occurs when deadlines are missed without communication or the work is grossly inadequate. If you made a good faith effort at the assignment, are otherwise a vaguely normal person to be around and are at a firm with a traditionally good offer rate, I don't think there's much reason to worry.

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Re: Bad Summer Evaluation

Post by Anonymous User » Wed Jul 26, 2023 8:52 am

Anonymous User wrote:
Wed Jul 26, 2023 8:15 am
Anonymous User wrote:
Wed Jul 26, 2023 5:31 am
I am a BigLaw summer associate, and throughout the summer I have received satisfactory reviews on my work product. During my mid summer evaluation, some areas of improvement were identified, and it was conveyed to me that I improved upon those areas. I had had satisfactory reviews or reviews that exceeded expectations. Just recently, however, I submitted a work assignment and received very negative feedback on it. The assigning attorney conveyed that it was unsatisfactory due to not including things in the assignment that they felt needed to be included. Now, I am worried about being no offered and not having a job going into my 3L. I hear that it is hard to get no offered, but that bad work product is definitely a reason to not be asked to return. I suppose I'm just looking to hear from others who may be able to provide some insight.
Who gave you the feedback? I got a bad review from a corporate partner in a different office. I was in lit. And the managing partner basically called me in and pretty much said the other partner was a jerk and that he couldn’t believe she put that crap in a review. I think it depends a lot. Turns out the person who gave me a bad review is known to be the worst and basically can’t even get associates to work for her. I guess she decided to assign kind of real work to random summers who have no idea what to do. Apparently she then gave multiple summers bad reviews.
I was going to say this. Sure, if the person who gave the bad review is like the most valuable, rainmaker partner whose word is law, that might be an issue, but if not, as suggested above, it doesn't necessarily matter. There are definitely people out there who are out of sync with their firm's expectations for SAs, both for how to review them and what they can expect SAs to be able to do, and I'd bet most firms know who those people are and disregard them.

also, I think this is very correct too:
Generally speaking, I think being no offered just due to work product only occurs when deadlines are missed without communication or the work is grossly inadequate. If you made a good faith effort at the assignment, are otherwise a vaguely normal person to be around and are at a firm with a traditionally good offer rate, I don't think there's much reason to worry.
If you did a bad job because you didn't include stuff, even if the reviewer thought you should have known to do so, that's something you can learn to fix. Mistakes in product that you can learn to fix should be fine (especially for a newbie like a SA). Blowing off your responsibilities is different and would be a much bigger problem.

Obviously I can't guarantee what your firm is going to do, but assuming your firm usually has the very high offer rate that most biglaw firms do, I don't think a negative review on one assignment is going to be the thing that makes them willing to mar that rate.

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Re: Bad Summer Evaluation

Post by Anonymous User » Thu Jul 27, 2023 8:08 am

When I was a summer associate I got staffed on a deal with an associate visiting from a foreign office who basically had me reading arbitration cases from a foreign country and writing case briefs on them. I had no idea wtf was going on. To my discredit I would also say I didn't exactly make any herculean efforts to figure it out I sort of just tried to my brute force my way through it and was like well here is what I think it says. Anyways, I sort of gave him an excel sheet of complete shit and then I guess in his evaluation he said as much. I was the only person among my friends to get a straight up negative review, but it did not really end up mattering.

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Re: Bad Summer Evaluation

Post by attorney589753 » Thu Jul 27, 2023 2:27 pm

If the firm is high offer %, then I think you have nothing to worry about. If the firm is known for giving no-offers, then might be worth thinking about. At this point there probably isn't much you can do about it. The best thing would be to do good work for others and balance it out with good reviews. I would second the comment about most no offers coming from badly missed deadlines/professionalism (rather than missed work product). I would also add that most associates will probably give positive feedback if you just try (as a summer associate) and you may have gotten unlucky with someone who gave honest feedback via a formal channel (but your work might be totally fine/typical). That's the most likely explanation in my experience.

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Re: Bad Summer Evaluation

Post by Anonymous User » Fri Jul 28, 2023 10:11 am

A one-off bad review is likely fine, but it's how you handle it that really matters. If you have multiple bad reviews for the same reason, that's a problem, but just one? Shouldn't be a big deal unless you used AI to write a brief or something.

Also, you should be talking to your mentors and other connections at the firm to get a sense of how you can improve - showing that you understand the issue and want to improve is half of the battle. In the unlikely event it does come up as an issue, you need someone in the room to say "I talked to [summer associate] about this and they are committed to not having it happen again, and they were very proactive in addressing the issue."

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Re: Bad Summer Evaluation

Post by Anonymous User » Sun Jul 30, 2023 5:39 pm

I received a negative review froma litigation associate and ended up in corporate, with no way to make it back to lit.

A no offer is not happening. Being shut out of a practice group and forced to lateral to a much worse firm to do lit is very real.

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