There's a conversation happening in law firms across the country that nobody seems to be having out loud, and it's costing the industry some of its best talent. Lawyers operate in an industry where they're expected to perform at a high level while often not being told whether they're actually meeting expectations, exceeding them, or falling short in ways that could be addressed before they become career-limiting or significant performance issues.

Most firms will point to their annual performance review process as evidence that feedback is being provided. Once a year, there's a formal sit-down, a conversation about billable hours and client work, perhaps a discussion about partnership trajectory or areas for development. But if we're honest about what lawyers actually need to feel engaged, valued and committed to staying with a firm, the annual review is doing the bare minimum.

The legal profession has always prided itself on a certain stoicism, an expectation that if you're not hearing anything, you can assume you're doing fine. But this approach misunderstands what keeps talented professionals engaged in their work over the long term.

The firms that are succeeding in retention are the ones that have embedded regular, informal feedback into their culture as a fundamental part of how they operate. What this looks like in practice is pulling someone aside after a significant matter to talk through what went well and what could be improved, or taking ten minutes at the end of a transaction to acknowledge the quality of someone's drafting, or being willing to have an honest conversation when a piece of work hasn't met expectations while there's still time to course-correct.

I had a conversation recently with a senior associate at a mid-sized firm who told me about a relatively simple shift in her working relationship with one of the partners. This partner had made a conscious decision to be more intentional about providing feedback around what the development areas would be for them to progress towards partnership. They put a plan in place around client and business development (acknowledging their efforts in this area to date), and in particular carving out a niche area for the firm to develop further in, and discussed timeframes for reviews and concrete KPIs as to what they needed to achieve to progress to partner, but also what the partner would do to support them in this process. The senior associate told me that it had fundamentally changed how she felt about being in the role.

This brings us to perhaps the most important realisation for anyone involved in recruitment or retention in the legal sector: This wasn't about whether she was getting paid enough or whether the firm's benefits were competitive. What had changed was that she now had a plan in place for her development, an acknowledgement about how her work mattered to what the firm wanted to achieve and hearing from someone she respected was noticing what she was doing, and that she could trust the signals she was receiving about her performance.

You don't only retain people with pay rises or perks. Those things can prevent people from leaving when they receive a compelling offer elsewhere, but they don't create the kind of genuine 'buy-in' that leads someone to turn down approaches from competitors or to push through the inevitable challenging periods that come with any legal career. What creates that commitment is the feeling that their work matters, that it's being noticed, and that they're developing in ways that are being recognised and supported.

Exit interviews reveal the same patterns time and again. People don't usually leave because they got offered marginally more money elsewhere. They leave because they felt undervalued, because they didn't know where they stood, because the only feedback they received was criticism delivered too late to be useful.

For firms thinking strategically about retention, embedding regular feedback into the culture needs to be understood as a core component of retention strategy that deserves the same attention and investment as compensation reviews or benefits packages. This means training partners in how to give feedback effectively, creating a culture where feedback is expected and normalised rather than being seen as something that only happens when there's a problem.

When feedback is done well and done regularly, it creates a culture of continuous improvement, builds stronger mentoring relationships, and reduces the anxiety that can lead people to start looking elsewhere even when they're actually performing well.

Lawyers need to know how they're doing, that their work matters, and that someone is paying attention. Get that right, and you've built a foundation for retention that no benefits package can match.​