At Insource, we frequently encounter law firms intensely focused on their billable hours, yet surprisingly unaware of their Recruitment Methods Costing them so much.. Traditional legal recruitment, with its reliance on external agencies and expensive advertising, is costing firms thousands of dollars in unnecessary spend. We recently observed a mid-sized firm incur an astonishing $65,000 in recruitment agency fees for a single lawyer hire. This amount is equivalent to purchasing a brand new Mini! It begs the question: what is the true benefit of meticulous billable hour tracking if significant funds are being leaked at the other end of the business? Are your recruitment methods costing your firm a significant amount of money every year?
The legal talent market is currently constrained, and traditional recruitment methods are proving ineffective in delivering the desired results. There is a very limited pool of lawyers actively seeking employment in the present economic climate. Firms consistently report difficulties in recruiting quality lawyers and filling specialist roles through conventional means. The reality is, the calibre of talent actively looking for work is often low. We are even hearing from specialist search recruiters who are now having to backfill roles they placed a year ago due to poor fit.
What does traditional recruitment achieve?
So, what kind of talent are firms acquiring through traditional recruitment? Frequently, it is talent that is discontent, lacking investment, or not being promoted by their current firms – there is usually a reason for their desire to move. Furthermore, firms typically do not provide counteroffers upon resignation in these scenarios. Is this truly the talent your firm aims to hire? Because this is the talent that firms often end up with when employing traditional recruitment methods.
How to change the legal recruitment game.
Insource developed a technology tool to fundamentally alter this dynamic, providing law firms with direct, in-house control over their legal recruitment and significantly reducing hiring costs. Our approach involves a fundamental shift in perspective, focusing on proactively approaching lawyers and considering the entire talent pool, rather than merely advertising and hoping for responses.
The Insource platform provides access to the complete pool of lawyers holding a New Zealand or Australian practicing certificate, as well as all registered New Zealand legal executives. Law firms and in-house legal teams can leverage Insource to quickly generate a list of all lawyers or legal executives matching their selected criteria for current or future roles. This enables firms to build relationships directly with their future talent well in advance of a hiring need.
Firms subscribing to Insource gain access to hundreds, even thousands, of connections known to their firm or their existing workforce. This is a powerful advantage, as it is always preferable to hire someone with existing knowledge about them rather than someone completely unknown.
Building a high-performing firm with talent aligned to its growth strategy is not solely an HR function – it is a leadership imperative. Partners and directors are uniquely positioned to identify the calibre of professionals necessary to propel the firm forward. While HR supports this mission, it cannot replace the strategic foresight and accountability of leadership. Insource empowers partners and directors with the intelligence needed to act decisively and identify top talent before competitors do.
The real question for firm leadership may be: are partners and directors fully engaged, actively steering the firm’s future, or are they leaving HR to navigate alone? To build a firm that succeeds in the talent race, partners and directors must be involved early in the process, with HR facilitating strategic collaboration from the outset.
The demand for legal talent and traditional recruitment methods costing your firm,
There is a significant demand for legal professionals, and a global shortage of lawyers exists. In the past 12 months alone, 70 of New Zealand’s top lawyers have moved offshore and been hired by Australian law firms. Australian recruitment agencies are actively recruiting individuals in New Zealand or sending their own recruiters to New Zealand to secure lawyers for Australia. Firms must recognize this pressing market reality.
Firms lacking technology like Insource lack market visibility. An Australian legal headhunter specialist recently shared that it takes her three years to successfully place a quality lawyer. This implies that if firms are hiring reactively, on demand, they are not securing quality talent. Instead, they are acquiring talent that has limited options and is actively seeking their next job. This type of talent is typically not being retained or promoted by law firms. “When I was a baby recruiter 25 years ago, we’d look at CVs. And if people had left jobs or they hadn’t stayed in a job for more than three to five years, we’d consider them a bit jumpy. Now, you don’t see too many people staying in a job for three to five years. People are moving more often,” he added.
“So, trends change, and you will expect people to move. And sometimes, it’s not bad. If some of those people do move, you just want to hold on to your rock stars. That’s where I prioritise. We spend a disproportionate amount of time on the lemons and the people we don’t need to keep, and not enough time on the rock stars that we do need to keep.” – Jason Elias in Lawyers Weekly 6 June.
Many firms employing traditional recruitment methods are not acquiring the right talent to meet their business needs and cultural requirements. They are compelled to select from a very small pool of talent that is actively looking for a new role. We understand that quality lawyers are not responding to Seek advertisements and LinkedIn posts. These individuals are well-managed, retained, and promoted, and they will only consider a move for the right role, which necessitates a proactive approach rather than traditional recruitment methods. There are various job boards out there. There’s SEEK. There’s Indeed. There’s LinkedIn. There’s a whole range of them. But the results for ad responses for the last couple of years have been very poor, and we’re finding a lot of people are quite disenchanted by the fact that they pay for ads on job boards that might cost them upwards of $3-400 and either get poor response, get unqualified response or get even no response,” he said. – Jason Elias in Lawyers Weekly 6 June
While the ALPMA New Zealand 2025 Legal Industry HR Issues and Salary Survey indicated that 71% of responding firms reported successful recruitment, a concerning 59% remained concerned about difficulties in securing skilled staff in 2025. Over one third (38%) of firms stated that recruitment was harder than the previous year, highlighting sustained pressure on talent acquisition strategies. A high 95% of responding firms identified retention and talent management as the primary HR challenge, with ongoing competition for skilled legal professionals, particularly among 97% of medium-sized firms. The survey also found that 63% of firms were prepared to offer salary increases up to 10% above existing internal packages to secure new talent, but significant pay rises remained uncommon, with only 9% of firms willing to offer increases up to 20%.
Conclusion – get the best talent and pocket yourself a car!
It’s time for firms to re-evaluate their recruitment strategies. Don’t let unnecessary expenditure and missed opportunities hinder your firm’s progress. Embrace technology and take direct control of your talent acquisition. Just remember, a mid-sized firm recently incurred an astonishing $65,000 in recruitment agency fees for a single lawyer hire. This amount is equivalent to purchasing a brand-new Mini Copper S.
About this article.
This article summarizes an interview that our MD Jenn Little originally did with Geoff Adlam at The Capital Letter on the May 21, 2025. You can view the original article below.
