How To Attract, Develop, And Retain The Best Legal Talent Through Innovation
Contents
.webp "How to attract, develop, and retain the best legal talent (1)")
Successfully recruiting and retaining energetic, engaged, and brilliant new minds will help your organisation build a dynamic workforce and achieve its long-term goals. Innovation is key to this process as the legal and business landscapes are constantly evolving. Learning how to adapt to changing times - and being agile when it comes to flexing up or down whilst maintaining consistent service delivery - will help ensure your team remains a safe pair of hands no matter what.
When attracting and developing new talent, it’s important to ensure the pool you draw from is truly diverse. Not only will this have a positive impact on DE&I/CSR initiatives, but far more significantly, it will give your team an unrivalled breadth of thought and experience, bringing added value to your organisation. Find out everything you need to know about how to attract, develop and retian the best legal talent through innovation by reading below.
Attracting talent is the first step in building a dynamic and capable workforce. The second step is giving these gifted individuals the development and training opportunities they need to thrive and realise their full potential within your organisation.
The generational shifts mean that quality candidates are generally attracted to exciting and innovative workplaces which exhibit faster and higher growth. Creating a compelling culture that aligns with these values and your organisation’s mission will get prospective recruits interested in your business and show them what your company is most passionate about.
Another key aspect of crafting an attractive work environment is transparency around core values. Continuing to place diversity, equity and inclusion at the heart of your company culture will show new recruits that your organisation recognises the value of working with talented people from a wide range of backgrounds and the skills they bring.
Promoting a good work/life balance can also widen your appeal to prospective candidates. Place an emphasis on wellbeing and mindfulness, and work to accommodate flexible and hybrid working, to demonstrate that your organisation values its team members. Teams with a good work-life balance are more efficient, productive and motivated.
Ambitious and talented legal minds want to see that your company looks beyond the short-term financial success of the business. For example, candidates will want to know that your organisation has considered and responded appropriately to environmental, social and corporate governance issues. This must go well beyond ticking boxes. Having social and environmental responsibility at the core of your culture and legal work will help inspire your team and ensure your business is working to keep up with both society’s evolving expectations about corporate behaviour as well as changing business models.
Effective Recruitment
In order to reach a varied range of candidates, you need to utilise as many channels as possible. Use social media, job boards, agencies, professional networks and any other avenues you can think of to access a diverse pool and make prospective recruits aware of your organisation and the unique opportunities it has to offer. Partnering up with universities or law schools can also help you tap into fresh, emerging talent.
Continuous Learning And Skill Development
High-quality candidates joining your team want to know that their future will be exciting and full of opportunities. Promoting a culture of learning and continuous improvement will not only make your company a more exciting place to be but will also ensure your team’s skills are continually evolving.
Coaching and mentoring programmes can be incredibly beneficial for new hires, as well as existing team members. These programmes can help with skill enhancement and career growth alongside their own personal development.
In addition to formal appraisals, you want to make sure you get 360-degree feedback from the wider organisation to encourage collaboration, which supports career development within your legal team and demonstrates your team’s alignment to the strategic goals of the business.
Many studies over the years have indicated that shadowing is an excellent networking tool and can facilitate the breaking down of internal barriers across the organisation. It can also help to improve communication between departments and is an opportunity for hosts to share best practices.
How To Attract, Develop, And Retain The Best Legal Talent Through Innovation
Gain expert insights on what you could implement to attract, develop, and retain the best legal talent and discover how you can build a dynamic workforce to help achieve your long-term goals.
In this guide you will learn:
→ How to craft an attractive work environment
→ How to build a flexible workforce
→ Different ways you can grow your legal team
→ The importance that diversity and inclusion play in the selection process
→ And more!
To get your free copy of the guide via email, simply fill in the form.
Thorough resource planning will help you identify the areas where new skills or additional support is required. The process also gives you the opportunity to think about how your organisation copes with fluctuations in demand and capacity.
Understanding your resourcing needs is the key to successful resource planning. As the role of General Counsel has changed significantly post-pandemic, resourcing needs have also evolved. Continually evaluating your team’s capacity and skillset will help you meet these shifting requirements and ensure you have quality people to call on when necessary.
Think about whether there are any development or skills gaps, taking the post-covid world into consideration in the process. For example, has your remit now evolved to look after regulatory and compliance, procurement, or DPO functions? Do you have the necessary expertise available to take on transactions that the business needs?
As well as working to create a fully resourced team for everyday operations, it’s crucial to plan ahead for busy periods.
It’s possible to make operations even more efficient by honing the traditional pyramid structure into a rocket shape. This reduces the number of lawyers at the bottom of the pyramid and replaces them with paralegals and other highly skilled people on the sides of the pyramid. These team members act as backups for the legal team in the centre of the structure and ensure the organisation has the resources it needs.
That’s where we come in.
If there are gaps within your organisation, Accutrainee and Accuflex can help to fill them quickly and help them integrate into your operations seamlessly to mitigate productivity loss. Using our expert knowledge and experience in the field, we’re able to craft bespoke solutions that give your organisation the resources it needs.
When seeking additional headcount and internal approvals, your management data can be a valuable tool to demonstrate the need for these additional resources versus the business risks of not putting them in place.
Think about highlighting and comparing the following:
→ Volume and fluctuation of workloads versus headcount and lawyer expertise→ Cost of interim flexible resourcing versus external law firm services versus making a direct permanent hire
Build A Flexible Workforce
Having a flexible workforce in place allows your organisation to respond quickly and effectively to the changing landscape. The agility it provides can be invaluable in meeting the demands of your industry and providing an outstanding service.
The ideal flexible workforce should have two main components: a core team of permanent staff with a versatile skill set, and an auxiliary team of interim and contract staff that can be used to meet fluctuating legal demands. Bringing in talented people on short-term or flexible contracts will give your core team the support and resources it needs to succeed.
Over the past few years – with Covid as a catalyst – the legal profession, like many others, has become a lot more flexible in terms of working arrangements. Offering team members a more tailored approach to their working week can improve their work-life balance and have a positive effect on mental and physical wellbeing, all factors that can have a significant impact on productivity and retention.
Different Ways To Grow Your Legal Team
There are two main routes to growing your legal team - adding to your permanent staff pool and using interim and contract staff. The first option provides your company with stability and continuity. It’s also important when it comes to long-term strategy and objectives.
Using interim and contract staff is a versatile and flexible way to add to your team as and when you need additional support. If these team members are talented, engaged and energetic, this can be incredibly useful when extra resources are needed for peak periods and large projects.
Most organisations would benefit from a combination of the two approaches. Obviously, cost, onboarding time and office capacity need to be taken into consideration when deciding on the composition of your workforce.
Here are some of the key points to take into account...
Pros Of Permanent Staff:
→ Developing the team
→ Stability
→ Loyalty
Cons Of Permanent Staff:
→ Employment challenges and issues
→ The ‘red tape’ of seeking headcount approval
→ Long term costs and implications of a bad hire
→ Turnover of permanent staff has a greater impact to team stability
→ Expense and inflexibility
Pros Of Interim & Contract Staff:
→ Speed to support resourcing demands
→ Try before you buy and access key expertise
→ Address immediate skills gap
→ Support ad hoc/urgent project work
→ Business may not be sufficiently mature to invest in permanent headcount
Cons Of Interim & Contract Staff:
→ Bringing people up to speed/ training
→ Instability within the team
Innovative Selection Methods
Implementing data-driven hiring strategies and utilising AI for predictive analysis can help you uncover talent and find the right people for your organisation. Having a structured recruiting program that relies on a team of individuals rather than a single hiring manager can also reduce the opportunities for bias in your workplace.
Fairness and awareness of unconscious biases are crucial. Ensure you’re treating every employee fairly and that salary and benefits packages are consistent for all employees with similar roles or responsibilities. Consider performing an audit with the support of your HR team to identify any pay gaps that may exist and which you may be unaware of.
Diversity And Inclusion
Diversity and inclusion should be actively promoted throughout the selection and hiring process. Drawing talent from unusual pools can have a positive impact on your organisation and help you expand the skillset of your team. Both diversity and inclusion can be encouraged through mentorship programmes and affinity ally groups.
In order to hire quality candidates from a wide range of backgrounds, it’s important to address unconscious bias. Having preconceived ideas or prejudices can cause you to dismiss or overlook excellent candidates and make unfair judgments during the hiring process. It’s important to be aware that unconscious bias training for your team isn’t in itself enough to reduce bias in decision-making.
As well as undergoing training, you may need to work alongside your HR function on the following:
Create a front-end selection process that reflects your company’s commitment to diversity and inclusion.
Alongside automated sifting to help reduce bias in the selection process, applications should be evaluated and considered by individuals who are not part of the hiring process. This will support the breadth of candidates being interviewed and offer a more diverse and open shortlist.
Being mindful of using social media to identify and source candidates. This has been shown to increase bias and reduce the number of people from marginalised groups that make it through the application process.
Obtaining wider feedback by having a range of people from across the business sit in on the interview or carry out interviews of their own with the candidate.
Scheduling interviews should be easy, flexible and accessible. Interviews should be available on a range of dates and reasonable adjustments should be accommodated where possible.
Development Pathways
Providing clear development pathways is crucial in attracting and retaining talented individuals to your organisation. Most engaged new hires will want to add to their skillset and build on their personal and professional abilities.
Quality candidates will understand that, in order to excel, you need to be a competent legal expert but also possess excellent interpersonal and technical abilities. If your preference is to prioritise your existing workforce, you can provide meaningful opportunities for professional development and support personnel in achieving their career ambitions.
Traditional vs SQE Route
Consider offering legal professionals’ opportunities for development and qualification through either the traditional or SQE route. Supporting individuals through both pathways allows team members to choose the option that best suits them.
External Support
Partnering with external organisations like Accutrainee can give your organisation the resources it needs to offer high-quality development opportunities. Providing interesting and fulfilling personal and professional learning pathways will enrich both your team members and your organisation as a whole.
Cost efficiency exercises should focus on the optimisation of resources. Again, innovative approaches can help. Integrating new technologies and working with outside partners to boost capacity at busy times can allow your business to run efficiently in order to provide an outstanding service.
Getting The Right Resources At The Right Time
Making an organisation cost-efficient and properly optimising resources is all about timing. Building a flexible workforce allows you to respond to changes in work levels with agility. Having a core team in place means you can avoid overstaffing during quiet periods and collaborate with interim and contract staff to provide extra resources at busier times. This efficient approach means your company only pays for the resources it really needs.
Conclusion
Attracting, developing and retaining the best legal talent is key to building an innovative, responsive and dynamic department. Creating an appealing work environment, providing high-quality development opportunities and implementing strategies for talent management will aid your company in achieving its objectives when it comes to hiring.
Your organisation will be better able to navigate the changing legal landscape if it utilises technological innovations and creates a flexible workforce. Regularly reviewing and adjusting your approach to align with your changing needs will allow your company to adapt quickly.
Focusing on diversity, equity and inclusion when building your team is essential if your business is going to benefit from a wider pool of knowledge and experience. The added value a diverse team can bring to your organisation can be considerable, especially if you use good selection techniques to find the best people for the job.
As market leaders in identifying the best junior talent we welcome the opportunity to support and help you attract, develop and retain exceptional people.
Meet The Senior Leadership Team...
See Below How To Get In Touch And What Our Clients Are Saying About Our Services
1. Success Stories
Learn more about how we can support your team and ensure it has the resources it requires.
2. How Accutrainee Can Support You
Arrange a call, submit an enquiry or send us an email so we can start discussing your resourcing needs.
3. Hear What Our Clients Have To Say
Our valued clients share their first-hand experiences about the services we provide.