Goal-directed performance appraisal (PA) theory includes four components: rating context, performance judgment, performance rating, and evaluation. This study focuses on the components of rating context and performance rating. For the study, the rating context was a large civil service organization that must produce documentation for attorney promotion decisions. Performance ratings were written documentation of the message a rater wished to convey to audiences who read the rating form. Whether the raters in this context communicated their PA judgments using the broad categories of attorney performance defined by the organization's PA form (case analysis and preparation skills, advocacy and communication skills, and role attitude, work habits, and leadership skills) was studied for 142 attorneys for one year and 174 for the second year. Results supported the assertion that performance appraisals by the attorney supervisors could be accurately summarized in the broad performance categories. Rater goal-directed PA theory provided a framework for interpreting these research results. (Contains 2 tables and 14 references.) (SLD)