Question: How many law firms are looking to simplify their recruiting process?
Answer: All of them!
According to a recent survey of law firms in the United States, 66% reported that it’s not easy to find skilled legal professionals in today’s job market.
Recruitment challenges are common in the legal industry in every country.
Fortunately, an easy way is available to mitigate these challenges: technology, specifically technology that simplifies legal recruiting.
And this technology is built into the powerful legal recruitment solution from Litera: LawCruit.
This brief article explores some of the challenges law firms face during recruitment. It also highlights how Litera LawCruit can help to ease these challenges and streamline legal recruiting.
Legal hiring: Why is it so hard?
Today, all kinds of law firms, whether they are large or small, global or regional, old or new encounter several difficulties in finding and recruiting qualified candidates with all the required skills, experience, and expertise.
One reason for these difficulties is that the market for legal hiring is both complex and skill-short. The legal profession requires unique knowledge and skills, and in many cases, expertise in specific areas of law. However, it’s tough to find candidates who tick all these boxes. In fact, finding candidates who possess the right combination of legal knowledge, practical experience, and specialised skills can be a downright overwhelming task for legal recruiters and their firms.
Another challenge is increasing demand. As the demand for legal services goes up due to evolving regulations and the increasing complexity of legal issues, law firms are under immense pressure to expand their workforce. Unfortunately, supply rarely matches demand, creating new problems for case management, customer servicing, and more.
Challenge #3: intense competition among legal employers. Top performers can choose from N number of firms to work with. Plus, these performers are part of a very limited pool of skilled candidates. These factors create immense competition among law firms and legal departments, making it harder for them to attract the most qualified individuals.
Finally, modern-day legal professionals – what we, at Prime Infotech Solution, call “Gen Z Lawyers” – have different preferences and expectations from their older counterparts. For one, they seek a better work-life balance. They are also looking for professional development opportunities and seeking a higher sense of purpose that goes beyond financial compensation. For many law firms, especially those that are still very “conservative”, it’s not easy to meet these expectations while also fulfilling the demands of the legal industry.
Strategies to overcome recruitment challenges in the legal industry
The above challenges will not disappear suddenly or quickly. If anything, they will persist and create even more problems for law firms and legal departments. That’s why, they need to find ways to mitigate the issues, if not eliminate them entirely. And there are many strategies to do so.
One: design targeted recruitment campaigns to attract qualified candidates. It can help to do some research into what modern legal professionals want and then design campaigns and job descriptions that clearly address these wants.
Two, collaborations with legal associations, universities, and niche recruiters can help law firms to expand their reach and bring their messaging to a larger pool of skilled candidates. The right collaborations can also help companies to build a strong brand that not only stands out in a competitive market, but also effortlessly attracts the top talent needed for a firm to grow and succeed.
Three, offer competitive compensation packages. These packages must go beyond an attractive salary and bonuses (although these remain important) and also include the perks that modern employees are looking for, such as flexible work arrangements and mentorship programmes.
Four, it’s vital to offer professional development opportunities. Nurturing internal talent through training and development programmes. can help law firms to build a skilled workforce and avoid the challenges posed by the skill-short legal market.
Finally, leverage technology. Today, technology solutions are available that can help law firms and legal departments to attract the best talent and streamline their hiring processes. One of the leading legal recruitment solutions is Litera LawCruit.
What is Litera LawCruit?
Litera LawCruit is an applicant tracking system (ATS) specifically designed for the legal industry. Any law firm looking to attract, train, and retain their best talent can benefit from the powerful yet user-friendly features in Litera LawCruit.
These features include:
- A centralised candidate repository that organises all candidate information in one place
- Customisable job postings that enable candidates to easily find and apply for open positions
- Automated, branded emails for timely, easy candidate communications
- Integrated Outlook appointments to simplify interview scheduling
- Customisable interview evaluations to get feedback on any role
- Automated profile creation for specific schools and on-campus interviews
- Summer Program Module to facilitate Summer Associate planning and communication
All of these features in Litera LawCruit are designed to help legal recruiters make the hiring process more efficient.
How can your law firm benefit from Litera LawCruit?
Litera Law Cruit streamlines the entire application process, from submission to hiring. It enables law firm recruiters to efficiently review and manage applications, stay updated on recruitment status, and easily manage any number of interviews.
The centralised candidate repository organises all information so recruiters can view applicants and sort them by their status. They can also filter candidates by categories and flag them to get back to them at another time. With all candidate information available in one place, they can collect all the candidate data and DEI information they need to help the firm be an equitable employer.
The customisable Job Postings feature enables candidates to find open positions with the firm. Recruiters can create different applicant types to group positions in different areas of the website. They can also automate candidate communications with branded emails created for each candidate based on status. Each email can include customised language and links to the candidate’s resume and cover letter. Automation also makes it easy to send offer and reject letters in bulk, saving time and reducing errors.
LawCruit integrates with Outlook so recruiters can automatically send Outlook appointments to interviewers. The software also integrates with other applications like Microsoft Teams, Zoom, and WebEx to further simplify recruitment at every stage. With LawCruit, it’s also easy to create customised evaluations that can be filled out on a mobile device. Plus, automated reminders can be sent, increasing feedback rates.
Litera LawCruit also includes features to automatically create profiles, applications, and interview schedules for different law schools. Moreover, recruiters can easily follow-up for OCI Callbacks with its Status and Flag features. All these capabilities enable law firms to better collaborate with law schools and expand their candidate pool.
Finally, LawCruit’s Summer Program Module is designed to facilitate a firm’s entire Summer Associate plan. Its user-friendly portal is designed to help Summers and Work Coordinators to easily interact with Summer Associates about assignments, allowing for efficient evaluations and streamlined Summer Programs.
Want to see Litera LawCruit in action?
Litera LawCruit is an ATS that’s specifically designed to help law firms make the hiring process more efficient and mitigate their hiring challenges. Prime Infotech Solution is an authorised reseller of LawCruit in India.
Want to see how it can streamline your candidate-to-hire process? Contact us for a free demo!
