Most managing partners are acutely aware of the competition for legal talent. Regional and national firms are increasingly measured against London and international salary benchmarks, often without the financial flexibility to match them. Retention, particularly at senior associate and junior partner level, has become one of the most persistent strategic challenges firms face.
In that context, many firms find themselves asking what more they can do. The answer is often framed in terms of Employee Value Proposition. Yet EVP is still too frequently treated as an HR initiative, rather than what it truly is; the day to day expression of leadership, culture and governance within the firm.
Employee Value Proposition is rarely determined by recruitment brochures, benefits packages or mission statements. It is shaped instead by how decisions are made, how pressure is handled, and how people are treated when issues arise.
For lawyers working in high pressure environments, EVP is experienced in very practical ways. It shows up in whether expectations are clear and applied consistently, how workload and performance are managed, and whether difficult conversations are avoided or handled constructively. It is reflected in how conflict, fairness and accountability are dealt with, and in whether leadership feels accessible, thoughtful and steady under strain.
These factors are noticed far more keenly than formal policies. Over time, they form a clear view of whether the firm is somewhere people can build a sustainable career, or simply endure a demanding phase.
Competitive pay remains important. It attracts talent and signals market position. However, salary rarely compensates for an environment where pressure is unmanaged, decision making feels opaque, or unresolved issues are allowed to linger.
Many lawyers who leave firms are not doing so solely for financial reasons. They are responding instead to cumulative experience; fatigue, frustration, lack of voice, or a sense that leadership is too stretched to engage with what is really happening on the ground.
These dynamics are now feeding directly into succession planning and junior partner retention. Many firms are finding that talented senior associates are reluctant to commit to partnership where the day to day experience of leadership feels overstretched, opaque or overly burdensome. Likewise, existing junior partners are increasingly questioning whether the personal and professional cost of partnership is sustainable in the long term.
In this context, Employee Value Proposition is not only about attracting talent, but about whether firms are creating a credible, appealing future for the next generation of leaders.
This challenge is particularly acute for firms based in Wales and other regional markets. Many compete for talent not only with local peers, but with London and international firms able to offer significantly higher salaries.
For these firms, Employee Value Proposition is not a branding exercise but a strategic necessity. When pay differentials cannot be closed, retention increasingly depends on leadership quality, fairness, autonomy, development and the lived experience of working within the firm.
Where EVP is weak, pay becomes the only lever left. Where EVP is strong, firms retain people even when they cannot outbid the market.
In practice, EVP is created, or undermined, by leadership behaviours. Managing partners and leadership teams shape it through the way they model workload boundaries, how they respond to challenge or dissent, and how fairly decisions are explained and applied. It is influenced by how early emerging tensions are addressed, whether difficult conversations are handled constructively or deferred, and how willing leaders are to seek perspective when pressure builds.
Under sustained strain, leaders may unintentionally narrow their focus to operational survival; keeping clients satisfied, maintaining profitability and managing immediate risk. In doing so, the internal experience of the firm can be neglected, not through indifference, but through overload. The difficulty is that people feel this shift quickly.
There remains a degree of cynicism in parts of the profession about wellbeing, often seen as incompatible with resilience or high performance. In reality, wellbeing is about capacity, the ability to sustain judgement, energy and relational awareness under pressure.
Leaders operating under prolonged strain are more likely to defer difficult conversations, tolerate unresolved issues and default to reactive decision making. Over time, this erodes EVP from the inside. Not dramatically, but steadily.
As 2026 unfolds, firms that retain talent successfully will not be those with the most polished EVP language, but those whose leadership behaviours consistently reinforce fairness, care and credibility.
Employee Value Proposition is not an HR project to be launched or refreshed. It is a leadership responsibility, renewed daily through decisions, conversations and priorities.
Firms that recognise this are better placed to retain key people, protect institutional knowledge, reduce the risk of escalation and sustain both performance and client care. Those that do not may continue to compete on salary, while quietly losing the very people they can least afford to replace!
