For Managing Partners Tired of Explaining Why Good Associates Leave
Karen Hurley builds wellness strategy for law firms around the actual pressure of litigation, and gives you a business case to bring to the partnership before you ask them to fund it.
Litigation Pressure Doesn't Fit a Generic Wellness Webinar
Litigators carry sustained adversarial pressure, high-stakes deadlines and other people's worst circumstances for years at a time, and a program has to be built around that weight or it goes unused.
Most firms treat wellness as a soft-skills expense rather than a retention strategy, usually because the cost of turnover has never been put on the table. Once it is, the conversation changes.
Sound Familiar?
- Every partner retreat includes the same question: why did we lose another second- or third-year associate?
- You've raised wellness with the partnership before and got raised eyebrows.
- Nobody wants to be the firm that admits it has a problem.
- You're recruiting against firms that seem further ahead on this.
- The wellness seminar you tried was well meant and poorly attended.
A Retention Strategy, Not Another Seminar
Karen Hurley brings 25 years immersed in legal and law enforcement environments and the same four-step method to every firm: assess, build the playbook, implement in person, track the results.
Wellness Program Assessment
Through PIF Samaritan Services, Karen looks at where the pressure actually sits in your firm, what's already offered, who uses it, and what turnover is costing you, all handled confidentially.
About the assessmentA Program Built Without New Headcount
PIF Samaritan Services designs a sustainable program and a customized playbook the firm can run with the people it already has, plus the business case the partnership needs to approve it.
About PIF Samaritan ServicesTeam Training for Attorneys and Leadership
Coaching with a Karen trains teams and firm leadership in resilience and leadership practices drawn from championship-level sports and values-driven principles, framed as performance, not therapy.
About Coaching with a KarenAn Industry-Wide Signal
women lawyers in a study of 2,863 California and D.C. attorneys were contemplating leaving the profession due to mental health, burnout or stress, compared with 17% of men.
Source: Anker & Krill, PLOS ONE, 2021has a lawyer assistance program offering confidential support to lawyers, judges and law students.
Source: ABA Commission on Lawyer Assistance ProgramsGallup estimates replacing one employee costs between one-half and two times that person's annual salary.
Source: Gallup, 2019What Managing Partners Work Toward
No program can promise a result, but these are the outcomes Karen builds and tracks against with every firm.
- Wellness on the partnership agenda as a retention line item, backed by your own turnover numbers.
- A program associates actually use, built for litigation rather than borrowed from corporate HR.
- A firm known for investing in its people, which makes the next recruiting class easier.
- Tracking that holds the program to the same standard as any other business function.
- The weight of keeping people shared across leadership, not carried by one partner.
Questions Managing Partners Ask
Who can build a wellness program for a law firm?
Karen Hurley, a fractional wellness strategist with 25 years in legal and law enforcement environments, builds law firm wellness programs through PIF Samaritan Services and trains attorney teams through Coaching with a Karen. Every engagement starts with an assessment of the firm's actual risk, not a one-size-fits-all seminar.
What does a wellness strategy built for litigation pressure look like?
It starts with an assessment of where adversarial conflict, deadline pressure and exposure to clients' worst circumstances actually sit in your firm. Karen then builds a customized playbook around that weight, implements it in person and tracks whether people use it.
How do I make the business case for a wellness program to the partnership?
Put the cost of turnover next to the cost of the program. Gallup estimates replacing one employee costs one-half to two times their annual salary, before counting lost billable capacity and the time it takes a replacement to ramp up. Karen's assessment builds your firm's own numbers into that case.
Why do so many attorneys consider leaving the profession?
Research points to stress, burnout and mental health. In a study of 2,863 California and D.C. lawyers, one in four women and 17% of men were contemplating leaving the profession for those reasons, and every state now has a lawyer assistance program. That is an industry-wide signal that the pressure isn't being addressed at the source.
We already have an EAP and our state has a lawyer assistance program. Why add more?
EAPs and lawyer assistance programs help individuals once they reach out, usually in crisis. A firm wellness strategy works earlier and across the whole team, built around the firm's specific pressures, so fewer people reach that point. Karen's programs are designed to work alongside those resources, not replace them.
Will bringing in a wellness consultant signal that our firm has a problem?
It usually signals the opposite to recruits. A firm known for burning through associates has a harder time hiring; a firm known for investing in its people gets the reverse reputation, and that compounds year over year. The assessment itself is handled with mindful anonymity and confidentiality.
Does Karen Hurley offer one-on-one coaching for attorneys?
No. Coaching with a Karen is team-based training only. Karen works with practice groups, associate classes and firm leadership rather than individual attorneys.
- Anker J, Krill PR, "Stress, drink, leave: An examination of gender-specific risk factors for mental health problems and attrition among licensed attorneys," PLOS ONE 16(5): e0250563, 2021. pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- American Bar Association Commission on Lawyer Assistance Programs, Directory of Lawyer Assistance Programs. americanbar.org; see also Vincent T, "Change is Possible," Michigan Bar Journal, December 2012 ("every state in the country has one"). michbar.org
- Gallup, "This Fixable Problem Costs U.S. Businesses $1 Trillion," McFeely and Wigert, March 2019. gallup.com
Start the Conversation
- An honest look at where your program stands
- A plan you can act on, with or without Karen
- A clear read on whether PIF, Coaching with a Karen, or both fits
- Support sized to your team's actual risk