You’ve made it to the end of your self-evaluation. You’ve spent a couple of hours describing your year, and there’s one section left: goals for next year.
You type “Continue developing client relationships.” Maybe “Seek additional leadership opportunities.” Then you hit save and get back to billing.
Both sound perfectly reasonable. They also leave nearly every practical decision unmade. Which clients? Developing them how? What counts as a leadership opportunity, and who decides whether you get one?
Several years ago, I started asking myself a question in the middle of decisions: What’s the story I want to tell at the end of this?
It began as a way to make choices in real time. Should I raise my hand in a meeting and say what I was thinking? Volunteer to interview the celebrity guest at a business development event, even though the idea made me nervous? Sometimes the question was whether to put my family ahead of work that day, or work ahead of my family. Asking what story I wanted to tell helped me think beyond the discomfort of the immediate decision and consider what I would want to have chosen, and why.
It also works just as well for accountability. If you know the story you want to tell at your next evaluation, the goals section stops being the last box on a form and becomes the first page of next year.
Give Yourself Something to Work Toward
A useful commitment asks more of you than continuing what you already do. It has a specific target, a plan for pursuing it, and a point where you check your progress.
Words like “try,” “hope,” and “continue to develop” tell the reader how you feel about next year. They leave out what you intend to do. Nobody on a compensation committee has ever been moved by “hope.” What moves them is evidence that you set out to do something specific and then went after it.
Not every goal needs a number. A defined responsibility or a clear professional milestone gives you a target too, as long as you’d know at the end of the year whether you reached it.
What Would Have to Happen?
Here’s an illustrative example. A fifth-year litigator wants more responsibility. Instead of writing “seek leadership opportunities,” she writes:
“By the end of the next evaluation year, I will lead the expert discovery phase of a significant matter, with partner oversight.”
Now ask what would have to happen for that sentence to come true.
She’d need to be honest about the experience she’s missing. If she has never taken an expert deposition, that’s the gap to close first, maybe by preparing the primary examiner for one in the first half of the year and attending as co-counsel. And she’d need to ask, clearly and in advance, to be considered when the right matter comes along.
Then she sets a progress check. Say it’s midyear. Has an opportunity surfaced? Has she closed the experience gap? If neither, what will she do differently?
Notice what’s in her control and what isn’t. She can’t staff herself on a matter. Staffing depends on clients, timing, and partners with their own priorities. What she can do is make sure the right people know what she wants and have seen evidence that she’s ready for it.
And If You Fall Short?
This is usually the real reason goals sections are so cautious. If you commit to something ambitious and miss, won’t that count against you?
It might, with some readers. But look at what the fall-short version can look like. Say her target matter settled before expert discovery began. On another matter, she managed the retention and preparation of the damages expert and took one expert deposition under her partner’s supervision. At her next evaluation, she writes:
“I committed to leading the expert discovery phase of a significant matter. In January I raised it with my supervising partner, and in March I prepared the primary examiner for an expert deposition and attended as co-counsel. The matter I’d asked to lead settled before expert discovery began. On a second matter, I managed the retention and preparation of our damages expert and took one expert deposition under supervision. I did not lead a full expert phase. I learned that my plan depended too heavily on one matter reaching the right stage. This year, I’m asking to lead the expert phase on at least one of two matters expected to reach it before year-end.”
She missed the target, and she says so plainly. The commitment gave her a reason to ask for specific experience and a way to recognize progress, even when the original opportunity disappeared. And she gave her readers something specific to evaluate: what she committed to, what she did, what happened, what she learned, and what comes next.
Nobody can promise every firm will reward that. But a precise account of an ambitious miss gives the reader far more to work with than a vague goal followed by a vague year.
Keep the Record While It Happens
That detailed and specific account becomes much harder to write if you wait until evaluation time to reconstruct the year. You need to keep a Progress Log.
For years, my Progress Log was a draft email. I chose email because I always had it open. When something happened, I’d open the draft and add a short entry: the date, what happened, and any client or attorney involved. At evaluation time, the year was already written down.
Yours can be just as simple. Once a week or once a month, jot down answers to four questions. What action did you take? What responsibility or result followed? What feedback or obstacle changed your thinking? What will you do next?
That last question is the one that keeps you moving. The log records evidence, and it also tells you when your plan needs adjusting, while there’s still time to adjust it.
It fits with where we started this month. Last year’s evaluation records what you committed to. The Progress Log records what happened afterward. Together, they let you write each year’s evaluation fresh.
Control, Influence, Release
Our litigator’s goal shows all three.
She controls the target she chooses, the conversations she starts, how she prepares, and whether she keeps the log.
She can influence whether she’s trusted with more responsibility by building support with the partners who staff matters and helping them see she’s ready.
She releases the expectation that preparation alone will decide staffing, client needs, or promotion. That doesn’t mean giving up on the goal or dropping the follow-up. It means taking whatever happens as information and deciding her next move from there.
Enrollment is open for my self-evaluation course. It helps you account for this year’s contribution and write specific commitments for the year ahead. It includes seven short video lessons (about 35 minutes in total), and a workbook that guides you to a complete draft in your firm’s own format, Progress Log included. You also get one 30-minute feedback call with me, which you can use on your draft or on an early-year goals and action plan. It’s $497. You can enroll here:
Back to the Goals Section
Go back to that last section of your self-evaluation, where it says “continue developing client relationships.”
What would you like to be able to say about those relationships twelve months from now? Get specific. Then work backward to the conversation, the preparation, or the decision that needs to happen first.
That’s how I’ve come to use the question: What’s the story I want to tell at the end of this?
The answer gives me something to do now to make it happen.
