For law firms

Build a firm where good lawyers want to stay

Registered psychologists helping NZ law firms reduce turnover, prevent burnout, and manage psychosocial hazards.

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Trusted by the NZ Judiciary, UniMed and Kāinga Ora.

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What we’re seeing

Turnover in law firms is not a people problem. It is a design problem.

People you invested years in are walking out, recruitment takes months, and you’ve turned down work because you couldn’t staff it. They’re not leaving for more money. They’re leaving because the demands of the work have outpaced the support around it, and that’s a pattern across the profession, not a fault in your firm.

The evidence

The cost is already showing up.

23%

Average annual turnover in law firms

ALPMA, 2025

74%

of NZ lawyers say their work has harmed their mental health

Aotearoa Legal Workers’ Union, 2021

Our approach

Three services. One approach. All delivered by registered psychologists.

We measure what’s driving harm in your firm and what’s keeping people well, then put the right support in place. Take one, two, or all three. Built for legal practices in Aotearoa, by psychologists, not consultants.

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Psychosocial Hazard Assessment

See what’s driving harm, and what’s keeping people well.

An evidence-based online assessment. Ten minutes per person, results interpreted by a registered psychologist, aligned to ISO 45003 and the Health and Safety at Work Act. It measures 24 psychosocial factors across the three WorkSafe themes, each benchmarked against sector norms.

  • A board-ready report with risk ratings, protective factor strengths, and prioritised actions.
  • Team-level breakdowns, with anonymity preserved by minimum group size.
  • A defensible compliance position under HSWA.
  • Baseline data, so you can measure whether what you do next actually works.
A warm, supportive one-to-one conversation between two people

Enhanced EAP

Registered psychologists who understand legal work.

Most EAPs give your people a phone number and a queue. Ours gives them direct access to a registered psychologist who understands partnership dynamics, vicarious trauma, and high-stakes decision-making. Every session is completely confidential — no names, no session content, nothing identifiable goes back to the firm.

  • Registered psychologists, not counsellors or coaches.
  • First appointment within three business days, urgent access within 24 hours.
  • Support across the whole firm, from partners to support staff.
  • Fully confidential. No session content, no names, nothing identifiable is shared with the firm.
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Executive and Lawyer Coaching

Keeping your leaders and senior lawyers at their best.

Confidential, proactive support for partners managing teams and pressure, and for associates building sustainable careers. Not therapy. Practical tools with clinical depth behind them.

  • One-on-one sessions with a registered psychologist, not a business coach.
  • Built for partners, senior associates, and emerging leaders.
  • Confidential. Nothing is reported back to the firm without consent.

The payoff

Why this investment pays

Supporting your people is not a wellbeing nice-to-have. It is how you keep who you’ve trained, build the leaders you’ll need next, and protect the firm from harm that ends up in front of a regulator.

A leader in a calm, focused one-to-one coaching conversation

Good people stay longer

Senior lawyers stop leaving in their fifth year, and the knowledge you’ve built stays in the firm.

The quality of work goes up

Supported lawyers think more clearly under pressure and bring better judgement to complex matters.

Partners stop carrying it alone

Partners and team leaders get private, practical support before pressure becomes burnout.

A defensible position

If a grievance, ERA matter or WorkSafe inquiry lands, you have evidence of proactive management.

Investment

The investment, and the cost of doing nothing.

Compare your firm’s turnover cost against the cost of acting. Enter your staff numbers, turnover rate and cost per departure, or use the pre-filled industry averages.

Your duty under HSWA

You are now required to act, not just to care.

Under the Health and Safety at Work Act 2015, psychosocial hazards must be managed with the same rigour as physical ones. WorkSafe’s 2025 Good Practice Guidelines make this explicit. An engagement survey doesn’t meet the threshold.

The courts are acting. In December 2024, Australia delivered its first conviction of a Commonwealth employer for failing to manage psychosocial risk — under a framework New Zealand’s law is modelled on.

Free resources, from our psychologists

Practical resources for the legal sector.

Short, practical articles and webinars for anyone working in law. No cost, no pitch.

A lawyer standing by a window in a Wellington law office in a quiet, reflective moment

Webinar · Replay

Why Good Lawyers Leave and How to Keep Them

Why good lawyers burn out and leave: the early warning signs, the three needs that protect against it, and what firms can do upstream to keep their best people.

Tuesday 16 June · 50 min · Chris Scott and Sean Versteegh

Watch the replay

Article · NZ Lawyer

Men in law: what NZ firms can actually do this Men’s Health Week

Three practical moves for law firms, from billable-hours norms to confidential clinical support.

Read the article

There’s more in our Insights library, with new pieces for the legal sector added regularly.

Browse all resources

Common questions

What law firms ask us.

Why is burnout so common in law firms?

Burnout is common in law because of how legal work is designed: billable-hour pressure, long hours, an adversarial culture, high stakes, and a "harden up" norm that discourages asking for help. These are psychosocial hazards, and under New Zealand law a firm has a duty to manage them. The encouraging part is that they respond to changes a firm can actually make.

What are a law firm's obligations under HSWA?

You have a duty to identify, assess and actively manage psychosocial hazards, grouped by WorkSafe into work design, social factors, and work environment. This is the standard a regulator or court will use to judge whether you met your obligations. The expectation is proactive management, not a response after harm has occurred.

How is this different from our law firm's current EAP?

We keep a small, dedicated team of registered psychologists who work specifically with legal professionals. Your people don’t spend half a session explaining what their job is. The result is a service people actually use.

Can our firm start with just one service?

Yes, and most firms do. The common entry point is the assessment, or coaching for the senior leadership team. The three services complement each other but none require the others.

How do you measure whether it’s working?

Every engagement includes structured reporting at three levels: what we delivered, what changed, and what it’s worth to the firm. Quarterly reports and an annual board-ready summary. If it’s working, the data will show it. If it’s not, we’ll tell you that too.

Is it confidential, and what does the firm see?

For coaching and EAP, everything between the individual and their psychologist stays between them. Firm-level reporting is always aggregated and de-identified. The assessment is an organisational diagnostic by design, intended to be shared with the partnership, with individual responses kept anonymous.

Get started

Let’s talk about keeping your best lawyers.

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