You know the move. The evaluation form lands in your inbox, you find last year’s file, and you click “Save As.” New year in the file name. Then you work your way down the page, swapping out matter names and updating the numbers.
An hour later, you have a self-evaluation. It’s accurate. It’s also, give or take a few client names, the same document you submitted last year.
I did exactly this for a while, before I knew any better. I’d pull up the prior year, see what had changed, and draft from there. It took me longer than I’d like to admit to notice that I was telling the firm the same story every year, and mostly confirming the numbers they had already sent me.
Why the Shortcut Makes Sense
Let’s give the shortcut its due. You’re busy. The form asks the same questions it asked last year. Much of the information looks similar. And lawyers are trained to work from precedent, so starting from a prior draft feels like the responsible choice.
I see the instinct all the time. When clients and I sit down to start on their evaluations, more than one has suggested we begin by looking at what they wrote last year.
The trouble is what precedent does to your thinking. When you start from last year’s document, it sets the terms. Its structure decides what counts as worth mentioning. Its sentences decide how you describe yourself. You end up updating an account of yourself that may not fit anymore.
What the Old Document Can Hide
Here’s an illustrative example. Last year, a sixth-year litigator wrote that she assisted with discovery and drafted motions and research memos on a large commercial dispute. That was a fair description of her year.
This year, on a different matter, she ran the document production, supervised two junior associates, and became the day-to-day contact for the client’s in-house team.
If she opens last year’s version and swaps in the new matter name, she may not remember to add in the details about her growth and leadership. She writes that she assisted with discovery and drafted motions on a different dispute. Every word is still true. But the most important thing that happened to her this year has disappeared.
Nobody reading it may notice what’s missing. A reader who doesn’t already know the scope of her work could easily conclude she did the same job she did last year.
What Last Year's Evaluation Is For
This doesn’t mean you should toss last year’s evaluation. It has a job. It’s the record of what you committed to.
Read it the way you’d read a deposition transcript before the witness takes the stand again: to see what was promised. Then report against it. What did you commit to, what did you actually do, and what happened? What did you learn, and what are you going to do next?
That includes the commitments you didn’t meet. A missed goal reported candidly, with what you learned and what you changed, reads far better than one that simply vanishes from one year to the next. The people reviewing you sometimes remember your promises better than you do.
Starting fresh still means answering for last year’s promises. You just stop borrowing last year’s sentences to do it.
One Question Before You Draft
Before you write a single sentence, answer this:
What do I want the people reading this to understand about how I contributed this year?
Write a provisional answer in one or two sentences. Then list the specific evidence that supports it: the matters, the responsibilities, and the changes, the decisions, and the growth that were yours.
If the evidence supports the claim, you’ve found the spine of your evaluation. If it doesn’t, adjust the claim. The facts are fixed. The story isn’t.
For our litigator, the answer might be: This year I moved from handling assigned pieces of matters to running significant parts of them. The production, the supervision, and the client contact are her evidence. Now her evaluation has something to say.
This question is where my new course begins. It walks you from that first answer to a complete draft in your firm’s own format, with short video lessons and a workbook. The course includes one 30-minute feedback call with me. If you want feedback before your submission deadline, plan ahead: year-end appointments will be limited.
It’s $497, and enrollment opens October 19. Join the waitlist here and I’ll send you the enrollment link when it opens.
What the Evaluation Can and Can't Do
The firm sees your work in fragments. One partner sees the brief. Another sees your billing. Almost nobody sees the whole year. Your self-evaluation is the one place where you get to put the pieces together and explain what they add up to.
Last week, I wrote about how I used my evaluations to make my contributions and my partnership ambitions explicit. This is where that work starts.
The people reading your evaluation bring their own priorities and assumptions. You can’t directly control how they assess your year. That’s The External. The Internal is deciding what case your work supports and making it clearly.
Going further, you control the account you put forward: the evidence you include, the contributions you claim, and how clearly you explain what they required of you.
You can influence how the firm understands your year by connecting work that different partners have only seen in fragments. Show them what those pieces add up to.
Then comes release. You don’t get to decide what everyone concludes. You give them a clear, well-supported account and release the expectation that you can manage every interpretation.
Control, Influence, Release. Your self-evaluation gives you a place to practice all three.
Twelve Months Is a Long Time
Think about what has changed since you last wrote one of these. New matters, maybe new partners, and responsibilities nobody formally handed you that you picked up anyway. Last year’s document doesn’t know any of that. It’s still describing the lawyer you were twelve months ago.
If you open it first, you’ll spend the next hour describing a year of new work in sentences written before any of it happened.
Enrollment opens October 19. The waitlist is here:
