LAWYERS´EVALUATIONS: STILL VERY FEW KPIs USED
21/07/2017 – Lawyers’ Evaluations: Still Very Few KPIs Used | Legal Management – Association os Legal Administrators
LAWYERS´EVALUATIONS: STILL VERY FEW KPIs USED
By Jose Paulo Graciotti
According to Management Consulta
nt Peter Drucker, knowledge workers
are individuals who have “high degrees of expertise, education or
experience and the primary purpose of their jobs involves the creation,
distribution or application of knowledge.” Their evaluations consist of
several factors ranging from the strictly objective to the more subjective
and they can be defined by the business philosophy of the office where
they work.
Before evaluating an individual’s work, we should do an analysis of this specific professional and
contextualize him or her in the kind of company where he or she works. The focus for this article
is the lawyer (partner or associate).
We have to understand the particular behavioral psychology of a lawyer to analyze and
understand the way he or she behaves.
According to Caliper Human Strategies (UK) Ltd., the following are some of a lawyer’s main
psychological features:
- Very low tolerance to failures
- High level of skepticism
- Great autonomy
- High reasoning ability
- High abstract thinking
- High sense of urgency
- Very low resilience
- Low socialization ability
Evaluators usually have some difficulties because they mix up some of the subjective indicators
and the qualification or the background of the professional. Qualification factors — such as the
technical or academic background, previous professional experience, specializations and
languages — should only be taken into consideration at the time of the inclusion of this
professional in the remuneration grid and in his or her career plan. They should not be used in
the individual’s periodic performance evaluation.
Another important factor that makes properly conducting an evaluation more difficult is in
relation to the office: the lack of more elaborate objective indicators (obtained in management
reports that should exist to help in the economic-financial management of each office). Many
small and midsize offices still perform their own management, which is insufficiently professional
and computerized. As such, the objective evaluation of their lawyers usually present a few
indicators, such as appointments and invoiced hours.
The key performance indicators (KPI) should be much more encompassing and only consider its
variation during the analyzed period. Then, there is a new barrier to overcome, as, when
implemented, the evaluation policy ends up showing eventful previous distortions originated in
the past of the professional, such as:
Wrong insertion in the career plan and remuneration grid by the time of the contracting
Insufficiently professional previous evaluations
Lack of a well-defined career plan
The same way we wouldn’t use pliers in place of a hammer, we must not use the performance
evaluation to correct those distortions.
Lawyers could and should be evaluated on some of the following performance indicators:
PRODUCTIVITY INDICATORS:
- Billed hours/worked hours
- Billed hours/target of the hours defined by the office
- Billed hours/partners billed hours
- Billed hours in area matters/billed hours in other areas matters
- Billed hours in his or her matter/total hours billed in that matter (KPI for partners) corrected or cut hours
FINANCIAL INDICATORS:
- Net individual contribution (invoiced — salary)
- Worked gross amount/billed amount
- Billed amount/collect/received amount
- Percent participation in profitable matters or not
- Growth in the period
- Profitability of the closed/concluded matters (for partners)
CLIENT ACQUISITION INDICATORS/CROSS-SELLING:
- Client fee received in the period
- New matters opened by indication
- Billed hours/amounts generated to other areas
INSTITUTIONAL INDICATORS:
- Hours intended for speeches and organization of marketing events
- Hours intended for articles and publications
- Hours dedicated to the performance of internal training sessions
- Hours dedicated to pro bono
- Dedicated hours for office managing issues
SUBJECTIVE INDICATOR:
- Technical evolution in the period
- Managerial evolution in the period (team)
- Evolution in the client’s management/matter (autonomy)
- Client’s degree of satisfaction (whenever there is this type of research)
In addition to those KPIs listed here, we could add several others. However, it will depend on the
existing managerial reports, as well as on the definition of their mix of values and weights, on the
work philosophy and market ranking of each office.
Gaining the support of an outsourced and experienced consultancy firm — which is also exempt
from internal political interactions — may not only help with this challenge, but also with
defining the specific model to the evaluation of these professionals.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jose Paulo Graciotti is a Consultant with Graciotti Assessoria Empresarial and an ALA member. He
specializes in the governance, planning and organization areas, with sound knowledge in
information technology and knowledge management. For the last 28 years, he was responsible
for management and information governance on outstanding law firms in Brazil.
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