Law firms wanting to take a more proactive and strategic approach to staff recruitment and retention have new powerful technology at their disposal.
Insource brings together highly customized software design and data science to enable law firms to conduct their own recruitment and provide powerful business analysis.
Insource contains up to date profiles for over 31,000 New Zealand and Australian lawyers, including kiwis employed offshore. It enables the tech user to search for lawyers on a range of criteria including expertise, sector specialisation, PQE, location, work history and provides an opportunity to connect and build relationships with future talent. In addition, the rich data can be analysed to form insights about the talent composition and movement within their own firm and competitors. It will enable firms to identify strategic gaps and opportunities for growth.
The monthly subscription based technology has just been launched to law firms in New Zealand and Australia. It is already used by New Zealand law firms with offices across multiple locations and Australian firms with offices across multiple states.
Lane Neave People and Capability Manager, Mark Lewis, who initially viewed Insource while employed at Canterbury District Health Board, is an early adopter of Insource and saw its incredible potential from the start.
โI can have an initial talent sourcing meeting with a Partner and deliver 10-15 potential candidates to them 15 minutes after the meeting, check I have the right brief and then adjust the search or start connecting with people,โ said Mark Lewis.
Shortage of specialist lawyers
Insource is the brain-child of well known legal and executive search recruiter, Jenn Little.
A shortage of specialist lawyers across New Zealand and Australia in certain practice areas has seen the industry increasingly rely on search recruiting, or head hunting, to fill vacancies.
As the only dedicated search firm for lawyers in New Zealand, Jennifer Little Recruitment, (JLR) grew rapidly between 2014 and 2019 from its offices in Wellington and Melbourne.
As demand grew, many hours were spent scrolling through outdated LinkedIn profiles to try and identify lawyers with the skills her clients required.
โThe demand for JLR to recruit lawyers through tightly targeted direct approaches was constant, firms needed us to turn our search lists around very quickly. We were desperate for a tool that gave us faster visibility of the legal profession and more accurate profiles. A bit like Steve Jobs who wanted a thousand songs in his pocket we needed to create something that put up to date profiles of thousands of lawyers in our pocket,โ said Jenn Little.
In 2015 Jenn engaged a developer to begin building a live database of New Zealand and Australian lawyers which she could use in her search recruitment business. After more than three years of using and refining the tool in her own business, Jenn decided to focus on releasing it to law firms.
In 2020, Insource was born with Jenn as Managing Director supported by a board with extensive experience in private equity investment and software start-ups.
Technology will be expanded to other professions
Today lawyer profiles within Insource are maintained and kept up to date by a team of researchers, ensuring the data remains accurate.
โThe data gives firms real time insights and unlike other platforms our data set is consistent and relevant to the daily operations of firms in New Zealand and Australia. For example, users can run a comparison by firm and can see when other firms are hiring, who they are hiring and where the talent is coming from, what firm retention looks like as well as diversity. Never before have law firms been able to see up to date intelligence on the legal profession and movement of lawyers. Itโs a huge step forward because if you want to be the best law firm you need excellent visibility of current and future talent to ensure you are hiring the very best lawyers for your practice and client needs.โ
Icehouse business incubator coach and independent Insource director, Kevin D’Ambros-Smith says once Insource is established within the legal profession the company plans to adapt the platform to assist other professions.
โThere is huge potential with this software to assist sectors such as health and engineering. The visibility that it provides simply canโt be found anywhere else,โ said Kevin D’Ambros-Smith.
