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The annual appraisal system there was terrible - bureaucratic and almost entirely negative. You could go for a whole year feeling like you were doing well, then some partner makes a ill-founded adverse comment (or criticises you for something which is actually their fault to protect their own back). It destroys at least 12 months' worth of collegiality and creates a relationship of mistrust, resulting in associates seeing partners not as their colleagues, but as their "boss" with whom they now have to tread carefully and send back-protecting emails saved to a specific location whenever anything goes wrong and revised in advance of the appraisal meeting in case they are sprung on you. Awful.