My firm is doing third-party “anonymous” upward reviews. Been working for a very difficult senior and would like to give them an honest review. Any suggestions on how I should approach this?

likeuplifting
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You should do what I do as a senior reviewing my juniors. Go to them directly and ask for a few minutes to talk. Tell them you've been requested to give an upward review, and you're going to give them a positive review but hoped they would be willing to take some constructive feedback which you did not want to put into the system where it could be taken out of context. Then gently and VERBALLY give them your feedback.

Don't put it in writing where the firm can use it against the senior.

like

Upward feedback can lead progress to be stalled until the problem is solved.

My Big Law firm did this. It took these upward reviews seriously, including by reducing compensation for misbehaving associates and partners.

My advice:

*Be honest — IF you understand that the senior may figure out you wrote it. This is okay if you plan to leave the firm anyway, for instance.

*Multiple negative upward reviews are the most effective. It’s hard to discard a chorus of negative reviews.

*If you are shooting for partner at this firm, you could still damn the senior via faint praise. It’s probably safest to say nothing and let others criticize the senior — but senior associate is a good level at which frank upward reviews could be useful.

like

My firm does this but will only give the upward feedback to the associate if 3+ people review them and the feedback is more generalized. Just be honest. Chances are if they’re difficult to work with others feel the same

likefunny

This is going to backfire.

Your job is to help the more senior attorneys, not the other way around. Even if they give no guidance and short deadlines (or do whatever else would make a senior "difficult"), that's fine and literally the way most of us learned. You're expected to be able to figure it out (or at least put some thought into it) reasonably fast.

Giving upward feedback is just going to show you have a bad attitude (in addition to not understanding the job expectations described above)

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Giving feedback may backfire but it’s not a bad attitude, it may be perceived as such.

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