The Feedback Law Firm Leaders Overlook (And Why It’s Undermining Their Lawyers and Firm Culture)
Are the lawyers in your firm getting the feedback that actually helps them grow?
I’m not talking about the feedback that tells them what they did wrong but the kind that tells them what they're doing well, what you want more of, and why it matters.
In most law firms, that kind of feedback is in short supply and the absence of it is quietly undermining both the lawyers and the firm culture.
Ask most law firm leaders what feedback means and they'll describe a redirecting conversation, giving the tough feedback to a team member.
But consider this: the research on high-performing teams consistently points to a ratio of roughly 5 to 1. Five pieces of reinforcing feedback for every one piece of redirecting feedback. Not because redirecting feedback doesn't matter. It does. But because reinforcing feedback is what creates the environment where lawyers can actually receive it, act on it, and grow.
Most legal leaders aren't anywhere near that ratio and the impact of that gap is significant.
Gallup and Workhuman research tracking more than 3,400 employees over two years found that people who received high-quality recognition were 45% less likely to have left their job.
And when it comes to what lawyers specifically, 2024 Law360 survey reported that 27% of associates planned to look for a new job within the next year, and 22% were unhappy with opportunities for advancement, both of which are directly shaped by whether people feel seen and valued in their current role.
Why law firm leaders skip it
There are a few reasons reinforcing feedback gets lost in legal practice.
1. Time pressure. Legal practice is relentless. Deadlines, client demands, competing priorities. In that environment, feedback that doesn't feel urgent gets pushed aside and reinforcing feedback rarely feels urgent. It's easy to think it, move on, and tell yourself you'll mention it later but later never comes.
2. A mindset that lawyers don't need positive feedback. They're professionals. They're qualified. They’re smart people. They know when they've done good work and they just want to get on with it. This is a costly assumption in legal leadership.
Lawyers are people too (believe it or not! Haha) and everyone needs to feel seen, valued, and acknowledged. It doesn't matter how senior someone is, how many years they've been practising, or how technically brilliant they are. The need for recognition doesn't disappear with a law degree or a partnership promotion. If anything, the higher the stakes and the harder the work, the more meaningful a specific, genuine acknowledgement becomes.
3. The trained instinct of a lawyer's mind to spot problems. It's the foundation of good legal work: identify risk, find the flaw, anticipate what could go wrong. That instinct, applied to leadership, means we’re often far more attuned to what needs to improve than to what's already working.
Our brains don't help us here either. There's a part of your brain called the reticular activating system, essentially, it finds evidence for whatever you already believe. Think someone is underperforming? Your brain will keep proving you right and filtering out everything else. The good work still happens. You just stop noticing it. So you have to make a deliberate choice to look for it.
What reinforcing feedback actually does
Firstly, it builds trust. When the lawyers on your team know you notice what they do well, (not just where they fall short), they trust that you're genuinely paying attention.
It also helps people see strengths they can't see in themselves. Most people take their natural abilities completely for granted. They don't recognise what makes them exceptional because it just feels normal to them. When you name it specifically, it can be such a powerful moment for someone. (It was for me in my legal career.) It tells them what to keep doing and build on in their role.
It also earns you the right to have the tough conversations and give the negative feedback when needed. Through consistently, genuinely showing people that you see them and that you notice their great work, it builds a strong relational foundation.
Consider the opposite: a leader whose team associates every unscheduled meeting with bad news. Every coffee invitation produces anxiety. Eek! When that leader needs to have a genuinely difficult redirecting conversation, and they will, they have no relational foundation to draw on. The feedback lands harder than it should and the relationship takes longer to recover.
Reinforcing feedback, given consistently and genuinely, is what creates the psychological safety that makes every other leadership conversation possible.
A little personal story to share with you….
A few years ago, I started a new relationship (with a tradie named Ross) after nearly a decade of being single.
Soon after getting together, I received a piece of advice from a friend that was so helpful. It was this:
“At the end of every day, ask yourself, what did Ross do today to show you love?”
Not where did he fall short. Actively, deliberately, look for the positive.
It changed how I showed up because the evidence was always there.
The same dynamic plays out in every leadership relationship.
The question isn't whether your team members are doing things worth acknowledging. They are. The question is whether you're looking.
How to give reinforcing feedback well
The most common failure mode in reinforcing feedback is vagueness. "Great job" or "well done" is not reinforcing feedback. It registers as pleasant noise and then gets forgotten.
You need to be specific. A useful structure is the SBI Model: Situation, Behaviour, Impact.
Situation: when did this happen?
Behaviour: what exactly did the person do?
Impact: what did it achieve, change, or signal?
For example: "In the team meeting yesterday, when the discussion became tense, you asked a great question that reframed the whole conversation. It brought the team back to what we were actually trying to solve. Loved that."
That person knows what they did. They know it was noticed. And they know what to do again next time.
Putting it into practise in a busy legal environment
The difficulty with reinforcing feedback is that it doesn't happen naturally, especially in a high-pressure legal practice where there’s always something more urgent competing for your attention. It requires building a deliberate habit.
A simple starting point (like I do with my relationship with Ross) is to ask yourself at the end of the day:
What did my team member do well today?
It might be a small thing. A well-handled client conversation. A piece of advice that showed real judgement. A moment of composure in a difficult matter. Name it and tell them! Specifically.
Start this week. Catch a lawyer on your team doing something right and tell them exactly what it was.