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Firms keep burning energy in the wrong places: offering bigger signing bonuses, investing in half-hearted mentorship programs, or trying to sell “culture” with cold brew and wellness stipends.
But attracting and keeping top talent has less to do with perks and more to do with clarity and consistency. Smart firms know this. They’ve stopped chasing gimmicks and started designing environments where the best people want to stay because they can grow, earn, and see a future. They also aren't trying to win everyone—they're building the right environment for the right people, and reinforcing it through real operational discipline.
This article breaks down a framework for building a smart talent strategy:
- Understand why firms struggle with retention, and what to do instead.
- How to attract the right candidates from the start (without overpromising or overpaying).
- What a strong onboarding and integration process actually looks like.
- How to build a culture that keeps high performers engaged (and, equally important, under-performers uncomfortable).
- And how your managers and systems either reinforce or quietly sabotage your retention goals.
The result is a firm that performs better, keeps its talent, and has a competitive advantage.
The Real Reasons Most Professionals Leave
Most firms think attrition is about compensation, workload, or the post-pandemic hangover. But those are symptoms. The root causes run deeper, and they’re fixable if you know where to look. Talent leaves when the day-to-day environment doesn't match what was promised or support how they want to grow. Here’s what usually pushes good people out the door:
1. Poor Management and Undefined Roles
Service firms routinely promote high performers into management without training them to manage. The result is inconsistent feedback, unclear expectations, and shifting goalposts depending on who’s assigning the work. Professionals are left to guess what success looks like, and when they stop guessing correctly, they leave.
What to do instead:
- Build reporting structures with managers who are expected and equipped to lead.
- Make performance expectations specific, consistent, and visible.
- Don’t just rely on annual reviews for feedback and career pathing conversations.
Example: We helped an advisory firm facing rising attrition by implementing a “visible manager” system. Each employee was assigned a clear manager responsible for monthly check-ins and biannual growth conversations. Managers were given a simple template to guide discussions around capacity, feedback, and development. Over time, the firm gained much better visibility into employee needs and workforce planning: spotting flight risks earlier, supporting long-term career paths, and making smarter hiring decisions.
2. Cultural Misalignment
Professionals notice when the firm’s stated values don’t match lived experience. Common examples: firms talk about flexibility but mandate face time or they push “collaboration” but reward individual origination. When the gap between values and reality gets too wide, trust is gone and people leave… often quietly.
What to do instead:
- Be clear about what your culture really is, not just what you hope it is.
- Align rewards, promotions, and recognition with the values you claim.
- Give employees a role in shaping culture, not just reacting to it.
Example: A mid-sized accounting firm had “flexibility” in its recruiting pitch, but in practice, employees felt pressured to come into the office four days a week. We helped them redefine what flexibility meant to them: “core hour” availability from 10–3, clarity on when employees should choose the office over remote work, and measurement of outcomes over optics. Employees who joined knew what was expected of them, and the experienced matched the pitch, improving early hire success and employee satisfaction.
3. Stalled Development
Most firms treat professional development like a checkbox, not a critical piece of their growth strategy. For example, training programs are too generic and mentorship often means one person is “assigned” to another with no structure or incentive to engage.
What to do instead:
- Offer practical, short-format training built around actual client work.
- Encourage real-time coaching, not just formal mentorship.
- Train managers to identify development opportunities and act on them.
Example: We helped a mid-sized law firm supplement generic CLE-style trainings with 30-minute, peer-led “practice sprints” focused on live client matters. For example, “how to draft time entries to prevent write offs” and “adapting communication style to each client.” Sessions were short, specific, and directly tied to day-to-day reality so associates could apply the lessons immediately.
4. Lack of Purpose or Transparency
People want to know how their work contributes, whether to a client’s success or to the firm’s bottom line. But most service firms operate like a black box. Employees are asked to drive results without understanding the firm’s strategy, performance, or even what’s being measured.
What to do instead:
- Share context. Use firmwide updates to connect the dots between individual work and firmwide goals.
- Explain how financial metrics like realization, write-offs, or utilization actually affect business health.
- Treat transparency as a retention strategy, not a risk.
Example: We suggested that a law firm add a 10-minute “state of the firm” snapshot to its monthly all-hands calls. It wasn’t a deep dive into the firm’s finances, just three slides: performance vs. goals, key client wins/losses, and one operational metric (e.g., write-offs, average days to bill, etc.) that the firm was looking to improve and ways employees at all levels could make a difference.
Attracting the Right Talent From the Start
The hiring process should be a way to determine whether someone will succeed and stay, but too many firms default to pitching candidates with vague value statements and promises of cutting-edge work with great people, an then wonder why new hires disengage. The other mistake firms make is casting the widest net. It’s better to clearly signal what success looks like so the right candidates can find you and opt in.
Here’s how to make smarter hires that actually stick:
1. Fix Your Interview Process
Interviews often test likeability more than long-term fit. Firms ask surface-level questions, sell an experience that doesn’t match reality, and skip over what actually matters. Then they’re surprised when new hires flame out. If you want to keep people, they need to know what they’re walking into and you need to know how they actually operate.
What to do instead:
- Be honest about who thrives (and who doesn’t) in your environment. Define what success looks like and be upfront about pace, autonomy, and expectations.
- Ask targeted questions that reveal alignment with your culture, including how candidates give and receive feedback, navigate client dynamics, and handle ambiguity.
- Evaluate growth mindset and values, not just technical skill.
- Don’t pitch a lifestyle you can’t deliver. Make the trade-offs clear so candidates can self-select in or out.
Examples: (1) A law firm we worked with added a second-round interview focused entirely on situational judgment, asking candidates how they’d handle scope creep or give tough feedback to a peer. (2) We developed a “radical transparency” approach to a creative agency’s hiring process, from including a “who this role is great for / not great for” section in job descriptions to training managers on being candid about the day-to-day of the role.
2. Compete on More Than Compensation
If you can’t compete on salary, don’t. You don’t need to match the biggest paychecks, but you do need to offer differentiated and commensurate value.
What to do instead:
- Reframe your offer: not lower comp, but a better deal for the life and career someone wants, whether that's fewer hours for proportional pay (e.g., 80% of time for 80% of market comp) or a profit-sharing component that lets them put skin in the game.
- Build in tangible differentiators that reflect your culture, such as guaranteed development time each month or performance bonuses tied to impact rather than billable hours.
- Make the trade-offs explicit so candidates can choose intentionally, and offer long-term retention incentives like sabbatical opportunities.
Examples: One law firm offered a four-day workweek option at 80% of BigLaw salary, attracting top-tier talent from burnout-prone firms. Another built in a professional development stipend and required each employee to use it annually, ensuring real support for leveling up.
3. Involve the Right People
If candidates are only meeting hiring partners and recruiters, they’re not getting the full picture.
What to do instead:
- Include peers and cross-functional team members in interviews.
- Let candidates talk to people who’ve grown in the role, not just those managing it.
- Encourage honest dialogue about workload, culture, and growth by giving interviewers suggested questions and talking points.
Example: We advised a law firm to include an “ask me anything” step in the interview process where candidates meet with current employees who would be their peer. The move built trust early and helped filter out candidates chasing the wrong kind of environment.
4. Audit Your Employer Brand
Your employer brand is the sum of everything a potential hire sees, hears, and reads about your firm: online and offline, formal and informal. It includes your job postings, LinkedIn presence, media coverage, interview process, Glassdoor reviews, alumni chatter, and what your current employees say when no one’s watching. What you say in interviews has to line up with what people see out in the world.
What to do to make that happen:
- Review your full candidate journey: job descriptions, interviewer behavior, and online presence.
- Use intake interviews with new hires to learn what messages landed and what raised red flags.
Example: Maior worked with a national law firm that was struggling to close top-tier lateral hires. Their offers were strong, but candidates weren’t sure the firm would be a good fit. We helped them audit the full talent journey, from outside recruiter conversations to interview structure and even post-offer communication. We aligned messaging across channels and coached practice group leaders to have deeper conversations on the department and firm. The result was better-fit candidates and, ultimately, more offer acceptances.
Nailing the First 90 Days: Onboarding and Integration That Actually Works
Most firms treat onboarding like a short-term orientation: a welcome email, a handful of tech-focused meetings, and lunch with the team. But the real test isn’t how smooth the first day goes; it’s whether new hires are fully ramped, connected, and producing in a reasonable amount of time. The first few weeks are where momentum builds or regret sets in.
1. Design an Integration Plan, Not Just an Orientation
What most firms call onboarding is really just IT setup and benefits enrollment. New hires end up spending their first month trying to figure out who does what, how the work really flows, and what’s expected beyond the org chart.
What to do instead:
- Create a week one / day 30 / day 90 plan with clear checkpoints.
- Assign each new hire a peer guide, someone recently onboarded who knows the real pitfalls and unspoken norms that they wish they knew upon starting.
- Map out with the hiring manager the key people the new hire should meet internally and make the introductions for them.
Example: We worked with a multi-office advisory firm to redesign its onboarding process. We put in a number of programs, including assigned peer guides to help each new hire navigate culture and cadence and creating a template for HR to work with hiring partners to list the centers of influence within the firm they would connect to new hires to ensure faster integration.
2. Pressure-Test the Experience
Firms often assume things are going fine unless someone complains, but new hires rarely speak up. They just disengage quietly or start looking elsewhere.
What to do:
- Use quick feedback loops to ask what’s working and what’s unclear.
- Pay attention to who’s owning the follow-through.
Example: Maior helped a law firm implement a structured 30-day debrief for new laterals. Instead of just asking, “How’s it going?” the firm used a short discussion guide that covered specific questions on clarity of role, culture fit, manager engagement, and access to meaningful work. The insights helped them fix real gaps before they became reasons to leave.
Keeping Your Best People
Hiring well is only step one. Retention succeeds (or fails) in the systems you build: manager relationships, feedback, and development. Retention goes beyond perks and slogans to ensure the environment supports top performers and holds everyone to the same standard.
1. Structure Better Reporting and Feedback
Most professionals don’t get useful feedback until they’ve already gone far off track. Worse, in some firms, employees don’t have managers (just a group head).
What to do instead:
- Make sure everyone has a clear “manager of record” who owns feedback, growth conversations, and support.
- Set a cadence of structured check-ins (e.g., weekly for new hires, monthly or quarterly on an ongoing basis depending on seniority).
- Make it easier for managers by telling them what to cover: capacity, blockers, and needs.
Example: We helped a firm redesign its reporting structure so every employee had a clear manager and monthly check-in. We built a conversation template focused on capacity, feedback, and priorities and trained managers to use it consistently. Employees knew where to go for support, and managers started spotting red flags earlier.
2. Create Bite-Sized, Useful Development Opportunities
Long trainings don’t maintain attention and they rarely match day-to-day reality. If people can’t apply what they’ve learned immediately, it is easily forgotten.
What to do instead:
- Build short, role-specific sessions that solve real problems—30 minutes, max.
- Prioritize peer-led and manager-led sessions tied to live client work.
- Create a feedback loop to keep improving what you offer.
Example: Maior helped a national law firm shift away from generic lunch-and-learns to monthly departmental trainings based on real client engagements. The sessions dug into how the team solved the client issues, dealt with opposing counsel, any how the firm adapted to the client's culture and cadence to instill in associates the importance of white glove service. Engagement spiked with associates proactively requesting training on issues they faced most often.
3. Let Talent Own Their Growth
Top performers want opportunities to stretch. All firms say they support those opportunities, but most don't have a specific path for employees to follow.
What to do instead:
- Offer annual development budgets, and make using them an expectation (not just a perk).
- Encourage lateral exposure, client-facing work, and internal initiatives.
- Ask your team how they want to grow and hold them accountable for taking action.
Example: We helped a firm roll out new employee engagement strategies, one of which was a professional development budget tied to new responsibilities upon promotion. Use of the budget wasn’t optional; it was part of the performance conversation and ensured happier managers who were better equipped to lead.
4. Build Real Career Path Visibility
Ambitious people leave when they can’t see a future in your firm. If the path forward is unclear, or seems unfair, you’ll lose good people even if they like the work.
What to do instead:
- Define what each level means and how to move up.
- Be transparent about promotion criteria, pay bands, and timing.
- Make sure managers are reinforcing the same message across the board.
Example: We helped a firm move from vague promotion conversations to a structured advancement framework by working with leadership to define level expectations, documenting what “ready” looks like, and training managers to deliver it consistently. Employees got clarity, leadership got fewer one-off promotion and salary requests, and the firm slowed attrition at the manager level.
Conclusion: Build a Firm People Want to Be Part Of
The best talent is looking for clarity, growth, and a place where their time is well spent. If your firm can’t deliver that, or won’t be honest about what life there actually looks like, you’ll lose people no matter how polished your pitch is.
Firms often try to appeal to everyone. But smart talent strategy means drawing clear lines. If your pace is fast, say so. If feedback is direct, own it. If flexibility means “work from anywhere but turn on your camera,” make that clear. The goal isn’t to attract the most candidates; it’s to attract the right ones and then give them an environment that delivers on your promises.
That takes operational discipline: clear reporting lines, thoughtful onboarding, transparent advancement paths, and managers who know how to lead. Culture is reinforced in every one of those systems.
The firms that get this right perform better. Because the same systems that attract and retain top talent also drive client trust, stronger margins, and a more resilient business.
