About Us

LAWYERS Coaching Lawyers

Partner Up is committed to your success. Unlike other coaching services, we are not trying to sell you business advice or back office systems. We coach you to achieve your goals by working with you to devise practical and achievable strategies.

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Rosemary Hollinger

Rosemary Hollinger is the founder of Partner Up LLC and a Professional and Leadership Coach. She graduated from Georgetown University Law Center and practiced law for over 30 years. Rosemary began her legal career as a trial lawyer in a legal aid setting where she tried both criminal and civil trials to judges and juries. After a brief stint in a small law firm, she joined the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission as a trial attorney handling complex financial cases. She worked her way up and eventually headed the Enforcement Division in the Chicago Regional Office and then served as the Chicago Regional Administrator for the Commission. She has served as faculty at National Institute of Trial Advocacy Deposition and Trial Advocacy programs for over 20 years and taught trial advocacy at DePaul University Law School and Loyola University Law School.

When she transitioned from practicing law to coaching lawyers, she completed the coach training program offered by the Coach Training Institute and earned her Associate Certified Coach credential from the International Coach Federation (“ICF”). She is a graduate of the advanced coach training program offered by the ADD Coach Academy and earned her Professional Certified Coach (“PCC”) credential from ICF and her Professional Certified ADHD Coach (“PCAC”) credential from the Professional Association of ADHD Coaches. Rosemary is married, has 3 sons and enjoys skiing, hiking, photography, Pickleball and travel. Rosemary is a member of Rotary International and provides pro bono legal services through the American Bar Association Immigrant Justice Program. Member of ADDA,CHADD and ACO.

Over her years managing members of the legal profession, Rosemary has learned that managers seldom have the time, training or inclination to coach their colleagues on the issues facing members of the legal profession including stress, burnout, fulfillment or career satisfaction, balance, change and transitions, professional interpersonal relations and pre-retirement life planning. She believes that a lawyer coach who understands the challenges faced by the legal profession could fill that gap.

Many lawyers have told Rosemary that they do not have the time to take days or weeks off to attend trial advocacy or deposition skills programs or are not interested in programs not tailored to their practice. Plus, some attorneys have observed that senior attorneys do not have the time or inclination to teach junior attorneys the skills they need to succeed. Consequently, Partner Up is offering a one-on-one skills coaching customized to the client’s needs to meet this need.

William Elward

William Elward was a Senior Assistant Attorney General in the Illinois Attorney General’s Criminal Trials Assistance Bureau. Bill has served as lead counsel on complex prosecutions ranging from commercial fraud and Internet crime cases to first-degree murders. Similar to complex commercial practice, Bill’s cases involve extensive pretrial discovery, depositions and experts; however, the vast majority of his cases end up in trial, which has given him the opportunity to try over 100 jury trials to verdict. Elward regularly advises civil attorneys in the Illinois Attorney General’s Office on advocacy, evidence and strategy. Bill is “Distinguished Practitioner in Residence” at Loyola University of Chicago Law School where he teaches Evidence, Advanced Evidence, and Trial Advocacy. Elward also teaches Trial Advocacy at the University of Chicago School of Law each year, and has taught trial advocacy at numerous law schools.

Elward is the director of the National Institute for Trial Advocacy (NITA) Midwest Trials Skills Program. Bill teaches deposition practice and trial skills nationally and internationally. Along with teaching several deposition and trial programs each year for private law firms and federal agencies throughout the United States, the Irish Department of Public Prosecutions has twice invited Bill to teach trial skills in Dublin, Ireland. Elward also taught evidence and criminal procedure at the Alberto Hurtado University Law School in Santiago, Chile, and taught comparative criminal procedure in Rome, Italy.

In 2010 Elward was recognized by the Illinois State Appellate Prosecutor’s Office for Outstanding Instruction in Depositions and Trial Skills. Bill routinely receives the highest ratings in his law school, bar preparation and advocacy courses. Elward is a cum laude graduate of Loyola University of Chicago School of Law where he was the Research Editor on the Consumer Law Reporter. Bill is married and has four sons and plays the guitar.

Sara Jeruss

Sara is a former start-up executive and patent litigator turned ADHD and Executive Coach. She earned her J.D. from Yale Law School and her B.A. from Cornell University.

Sara also has ADHD and was diagnosed while in her 30s. Her diagnosis helped her understand why she switched careers so much, and why even though she was “successful” on paper she constantly felt overwhelmed and burned out — work just seemed harder for her.

Sara became a coach because working with people 1:1 has been her favorite part of every job she’s had. As a coach, she draws on her empathy, sense of humor, love of learning, and ability to hyper-focus and make connections between different ideas. Sara is passionate about helping people identify their top strengths — the things that feel energizing to you –and creating solutions that draw on these strengths. She is training to earn her Associate Certified Coach credential from the International Coaching Federation (“ICF”).

Sara draws on her background to provide tailored support to attorneys. She understands the intricacies of legal roles and works with clients to leverage their unique strengths while developing strategies to manage ADHD overwhelm, big emotions, and struggles with organization, time-blindness, prioritization, and burnout. She also enjoys working with clients on navigating tricky interpersonal situations, optimizing communication and designing processes that work. As someone who jumped from law to business, she can also help you explore if a career change makes sense for you.

As your coach, Sara will partner with you on present-day challenges and guide you in developing a personalized strategy to achieve your goals. She provides accountability and guidance as you navigate the challenges of having ADHD in a high-intensity workplace or law school.

Evan Monez

Evan Monez specializes in coaching adults with ADHD and other executive function challenges. In addition to advanced training from the ADD Coach Academy (ADDCA), Evan has a lifetime of personal experience living with her own ADHD brain, though she was not diagnosed until well into adulthood as a struggling associate attorney at a prominent Seattle law firm.

Evan managed to earn a BA in English Literature with Distinction from the University of Virginia, a J.D. from the University of Texas, and an LL.M. in Taxation from the University of Washington by leveraging her strengths well-suited to academics and relying on flawed but effective coping mechanisms (e.g. a lot of all-nighters right before tests and due dates).

When she finally launched into the real world of practicing law, specializing in trusts, estates, and tax planning for high-net-worth individuals, her ADHD and anxiety went into overdrive and those coping mechanisms no longer worked. Paralyzed about where to start on projects, unable to prioritize or manage her time well, and so far behind that time pressure was constant and no longer an effective motivator, she finally figured out that she had ADHD with the help of a mental health counselor. The more she learned about ADHD beyond common stereotypes, the more her whole life experience started to make sense.

Unfortunately, a diagnosis can be a helpful first step, but there is no instant cure for overwhelm and burnout. Evan didn’t know what she needed in order to ask for it and her firm didn’t know how to help her. Moreover, she didn’t feel like she had the support or safety to be honest about just how much she was struggling, the tools to dig out of it herself, or any attorney friends who were open about having ADHD who she could talk to. Despite tapping into social media networks of ADHD adults and realizing she was not alone, she still felt very isolated in her own life. She needed an ADHD coach!

One of the most valuable things that a coach can provide is a nonjudgmental space for clients to process their experiences and know they will be received without judgment. For ADHD attorneys, that means someone who can help them work through their overwhelm paralysis, identify priorities, and find strategies that are effective for their unique brains without having to hold back for fear they will be misunderstood, judged, or otherwise hurt their career by being honest about how much they are struggling.

Ultimately, learning about her own ADHD and experiencing the power of ADHD coaching as a client sent Evan on the path to discovering her calling as an ADHD coach herself. As a coach she is passionate about helping overwhelmed attorneys work through their challenges and find strategies that work for their unique brains so they can stay in the law if that is their true passion, or make choices about what they would prefer to be doing, rather than being forced into those choices by overwhelm and burnout.