Report comment

Hogans has obviously been doing it wrong all this time and has clearly not understood the process or why it is there in the first place. The annual review is the culmination of a series of regular (and ad hoc) short 1:1s which every employee should have with his / her manager. If we had more of these, then there would be far fewer scandals of rogue employees (including Partners) defrauding their firms and clients.

I was doing this sort of thing in industry in the 1980s. It's amazing how backward even the biggest law forms are in their people management skills.

The annual appraisal should raise nothing new, but should align with the overall business plan / strategy of the department and the business as a whole. There should never be any surprises in any end of year appraisal and (if supervisor and supervised are both doing their jobs properly and professionally) there shouldn't be any need for excessive amounts of preparation from either side.