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Our Legal Talent Acquisition and Retention (L-TAR®) System

Our 4-step Legal Talent Acquisition and Retention (L-TAR®) system helps businesses recruit in-house lawyers of the highest calibre. Companies need in-house lawyers who are not only technically excellent, but who also have the right behavioural fit for the business. Technical competence alone is not enough. Businesses that ignore behavioural fit, often find themselves wasting valuable time and money repeating the process. Florit Legal’s comprehensive L-TAR® system helps to prevent this. Here’s how…

Discovery Call: Our process starts with a Discovery Call – an informal discussion aimed at exploring whether our businesses are the right fit for one another. There’s no obligation at this point. Our objective is simply to understand fully your particular legal recruitment challenges and whether we can work together. We fully appreciate that, before you spend money retaining any legal recruiter, you need to be confident they will deliver a return on your investment and feel comfortable they will de-risk the process for you.

This boils down to 3 key questions: How will they deliver the right behavioural fit in the legal candidates presented? How will they help the appointee to succeed, and integrate quickly in their first 100 days in a new role? And what happens if employment is terminated in the first 12 months?

Briefing Meeting: Once you’re comfortable with our answers to those questions, we sign terms, and meet to take a detailed brief from you, which forms the basis of our terms of reference, prior to engaging with potential legal candidates, on your behalf. We cover four things:

  • Legal job specification: We gain a full understanding of the background and rationale underpinning the creation of the role. We also explore the full extent of the relevant responsibilities, accountabilities and day to day activities.
  • Legal candidate pool: Together, we define and agree the legal candidate pool, based on technical legal skills, length of experience, and the extent to which this needs to have come from another in-house legal department, a commercial legal practice, or both.
  • Business fit: We take steps to understand exactly how a client’s legal department operates, the company culture, structure, decision-making approach, and any particular features associated with the hiring manager’s work style, motivations and competencies.
  • Behavioural fit: Most importantly, we work with the hiring manager to identify the desired behavioural profile required for success in each job. To do this, we use cutting edge McQuaig® job profiling technology as part of our process. This is one of the major factors that sets our processes apart from of other specialist in-house legal recruiters.

Terms of Reference: Having explored your legal recruitment needs in depth, we incorporate our findings in a ‘terms of reference’ document for you to sign off. That way, everything’s clear and everyone’s on the same page, before we engage with the legal candidate pool, on your behalf.

Research: Research and engagement is an ongoing process in the niche UK legal market. When we have your mandate, the approach is laser focused on exactly the right pool of candidates from both in-house legal departments and commercial law firms (where we have no conflicts of interest whatsoever). We undertake extensive, legal talent research to identify sources and contacts, and make use of emerging technologies to connect and engage with appropriately qualified solicitors and other legal candidates.

Advertising: Where appropriate, we extend the reach with appropriately placed recruitment advertising, managed by us, and incorporating a client’s branding. This ensures the role gains the attention of candidates right across the UK, or further afield, where there may be already be a desire to relocate. We also offer leverage through social media channels as part of the process.

Outreach: Engagement is extensive in order to increase the selection of candidates you are able to recruit from. Our aim is for you to hire someone from the top 20% of candidates available in the entire legal market, whether or not they consider themselves to be actively seeking a new legal job. We focus on passive legal candidates, on your behalf. If you don’t engage with passive candidates, you’re at a huge disadvantage because you end up being restricted to a very small number of candidates who are open to new opportunities. (Our research has shown that this is frequently less than 5% of candidates with the particular qualifications, legal job and industry sector experience required by a client).

This stage of the process marries up our extensive legal recruitment experience and objectivity with cutting-edge, behavioural assessment technology. This enables clients to recruit in-house lawyers with the correct cultural fit for the organisation and right behavioural fit for both the team they are joining and the legal role they will be performing.

The initial screening process is undertaken by an experienced legal recruiter. Our interviews are both biographical and competency based. We aim to uncover the key drivers influencing each candidate’s chosen career path and the goals they are looking to achieve in their next move, and beyond. We then evaluate whether this is likely to be achieved if they were to take up the in-house legal role in question. We explore total compensation, so that you are fully informed, and break this down into each composite part of the package to ensure candidates are on brief. We set appropriate expectations on each side, and explore the prospects and consequences of a counter-offer, from the outset.

Shortlisted candidates are presented to you with a CV, executive summary, and an assessment of how closely each one matches the behavioural profile you created when we took our brief. The behavioural profiling technology we use helps clients evaluate how each candidate will perform the role before you make a hiring decision, instead of relying on trial and error after you appoint them. The valuable foresight this provides is a key element in minimising the risk of a wrong hire – and is one of the elements of our L-TAR® process that sets us apart from other legal recruitment companies.

Ultimately, any recruitment agency on a PSL can send you a selection of CVs, matched to a job description, assuming they have the experience to know what they are doing. But that’s only a partial service with, let’s face it, hardly any effort. The experience of in-house legal and HR teams we have worked with in the past shows you can hire the most technically gifted lawyer within your budget this way, but unless they are the right fit for the business, you risk wasting significant time and money with that recruitment model and having to repeat the process.

When we set up the business, our mission was (and still is) to add more value to the recruitment process than any other legal recruiter – via a premium service designed to create enduring relationships.

Employee retention drives us, every day. This is of paramount importance to companies when the costs of attrition, and failed attempts to recruit, are so high. Our primary aim is to enhance this element of the legal recruitment process for you.

By the time one of our legal candidates accepts your offer of employment, step one of our enhancement process is already complete: by using behavioural assessment technology, you’re already confident that the person you have hired has the right fit. And with the right fit, they are less likely to disappoint you, or leave you.

It’s not only the behavioural assessment that allows us to de-risk the legal hiring process for you. Once a role has been filled, our commitment continues beyond the appointee’s start date. Our Employee Retention Programme (ERP), provides further opportunities to de-risk the process for clients, through structured follow-ups and executive coaching, from our panel of independent coaching associates. This is included in the price of our service, which is backed by market leading guarantees* which are above and beyond those we used to provide before we adopted this model. Such is the confidence in our process.

In a 2017 report, the Recruitment & Employment Confederation identified that the cost of a bad hire could be over 3 times the individual’s annual salary. Our process is aimed at eliminating this wasted time and money. Read some of our Success Stories.

*Terms and Conditions apply

Features of our L-TAR® system*

Our Legal Talent Acquisition and Retention (L-TAR®) system has been developed specifically for the recruitment of in-house lawyers in the UK. The system is designed to enable our clients to recruit from approximately the top 20% of potential in-house lawyer candidates, regardless of whether they currently work in-house or in a law firm. It enables us to map the majority of the UK commercial lawyer market, which means we have access to significantly more candidates than can be sourced from ‘traditional’ legal recruitment methods. L-TAR® combines job profiling technology with behavioural and personality assessments and decades of legal recruitment sector expertise to ensure our clients and candidates are ideally suited to one another.

Market Mapping

  • The majority of the in-house lawyer and practice lawyer demographic.
  • Data verification and updates conducted regularly to ensure accuracy.

Inbound Systems

  • Gather legal market information regularly.
  • Promote access to the passive candidates among in-house lawyers.

Candidate/Job Profiling

  • Behavioural assessment technology.
  • Reliable insights on suitability. Bespoke guidance on interview questions to explore suitability.

Quality Assurance

  • Competency based interviews with a senior legal recruiter.
  • Optional video interviews.

Shortlisting

  • Secure Client Portal
  • Access candidate shortlist information securely, anytime, anywhere.

Employee Retention Plan

  • ERP includes regular follow-up and alerts.
  • ERP includes an executive coaching programme.
* terms and conditions apply.

How L-TAR® benefits your business

Reduces recruitment costs

Promotes the recruitment and retention of in-house lawyers with the right cultural fit for your organisation. Avoids costly attrition.

Reduced time to hire

Dramatically speeds up your time to hire and minimises any disruption to the legal department or the business.

Removes any guesswork

Behavioural assessments help frame interview questions and promote objective, evidence-based decision making.

Competitive Advantage

Access the majority of the UK in-house lawyer talent pool. Make better ‘filtering’ choices by engaging with just the top 20%.

FAQ’s

We already have an internal recruitment / HR team, so why would we need your L-TAR® system?

Undeniably, many large organisations have excellent talent acquisition capabilities, but are often surprised when we start to explore the gap between the number of candidates they can attract themselves when shown as a fraction of the total legal talent pool. Generally speaking, internal recruitment departments can access no more than around 20% of the total talent pool for a given role. They don’t have the time or the contacts that enable them to continually enagage with the passive legal talent pool. Also, when it comes to recruiting in-house lawyers, many have little or no experience in this niche field.

Our clients tell us legal recruitment is a distraction for them, taking them away from their regular activities. We fix that, so you can make better use of your time, whilst also successfully fulfilling your objectives on any in-house lawyer recruitment project.

We already use a legal recruitment agency. So, what makes you different?

Aside from our ability to reach the majority of the UK in-house legal recruitment market with L-TAR®, we have developed a thorough research, engagement and assessment process which is designed to zoom in on the top 20% of any given pool of UK legal candidates, accurately benchmark their behavioural assessments against the job requirements, and ensure the right fit. Additionally, the features of our post placement retention programme reduce the risk of attrition and avoid you having to pay twice to replace an in-house lawyer who leaves in the first 12 months.

How wide is your geographical coverage?

Put simply, we cover all types of legal role performed by in-house lawyers in the UK, in any industry sector, from our hubs in Leeds and London. So, this means we fill legal jobs in London and the Home Counties, The South, and the major commercial centres in the North, Scotland, and the Midlands.

What job titles and positions do you cover?

Legal job titles tend to vary from one organisation to another. Most commonly the in-house lawyers we are requested to recruit tend to have the following job titles (or combinations thereof):

SeniorOther
General Counsel & Company SecretaryDeputy General Counsel
Group General CounselAssociate General Counsel
Group Company SecretaryAssistant General Counsel
Chief Legal Counsel / OfficerRegional Counsel
Head of Corporate GovernanceUK Legal Counsel
Legal DirectorSenior Counsel
Head of Legal ServicesLegal Counsel
Head of Legal and ComplianceCorporate Counsel
Company SolicitorIn-house Legal Adviser / Counsel

What legal specialisms do you cover?

In around 80% of cases, clients are looking for a corporate lawyer or commercial solicitor to take up an in-house lawyer position. They need a “generalist” and these people are frequently regarded as being the most appropriate to handle the full variety of legal issues facing a business. Most commonly these range from commercial contracts with suppliers and customers, to corporate transactional matters, major legal projects such as acquisitions, joint ventures, IPO’s and company reorganisations, as well as managing the effectiveness of external legal advisers in law firms.

Most CommonlyLess Frequently
Corporate Lawyers (Corporate Finance, M&A, Private Equity, Venture Capital)Corporate Recovery Lawyers

Commercial Lawyers

  • Technology and Telecoms Lawyers
  • Intellectual Property Lawyers
  • Media, Entertainment and Sport
Commercial Property / Real Estate Lawyers
Commercial Litigation Lawyers
Employment Lawyers
Pensions and Employee Benefits Lawyers
Planning and Environmental Lawyers

Capital Projects Lawyers

  • Construction and Engineering Lawyers
  • Project Finance Lawyers

Energy Lawyers

  • Renewable Energy Lawyers
  • Oil & Gas Lawyers

Financial Services Lawyers

  • Retail Banking and Insurance lawyers (eg Consumer credit, FCA, MCOB, ICOB etc)
  • Commercial Banking Lawyers (asset finance, securitisation, capital markets)

Regulatory Lawyers

  • Company Secretaries and Corporate Governance specialists
  • Data Protection Lawyers (GDPR)
  • Anti-bribery specialists
  • Sector specific legal and regulatory roles (eg Telecoms, Energy, Water, Sport etc).

Since your L-TAR® system has access to the majority of the legal market, aren’t there ever conflicts of interest?

Hardly ever really. Firstly, if we feel there is a conflict, we will make you aware from the outset. However, in such cases, there are a number of practical ways of avoiding issues, without compromising our high integrity.

You are ‘off limits’: As soon as you retain Florit Legal exclusively to recruit an in-house lawyer for you, any of your existing in-house lawyers are immediately placed ‘off limits’ to ensure they are not contacted by us on other recruitment projects. Additionally, once we have placed a candidate with you, that person stays off limits, whilst there, ‘for life’ (unless they open dialogue with us independently – eg in response to a legal job advert). These factors mean we can never offer 100% coverage. Professionally and ethically-speaking, no legal recruiter ever can.

Conversely, law firms are not: Of the 110,000 solicitors in the private sector in England & Wales alone, just 15% (around 17,000) work as in-house lawyers*. This leaves up to around 93,000 solicitors available to you in commercial law firms. We never act for that category of employer. They are obviously a source of candidates for you. Ultimately, when we are also advertising your role and featuring it, and your organisation, on our Insights blog, social media channels and newsletters etc, this always manages to help us avoid conflict issues.

* This figure is just practising solicitors (so excludes many more barristers, legal executives and overseas qualified people working as in-house lawyers in the UK).

Success Stories

Florit Legal recruitment consultants have undertaken in-house legal recruitment assignments for a wide range of businesses in the UK since 1998. This is selection of successful assignments we have been intructed or retained on .

Legal Recruitment Insights

Dunelm Head of Legal, Emily Ashton

Dunelm Head of Legal, Emily Ashton

Dunelm's Head of Legal, Emily Ashton, who joined the company in 2022 as Senior Legal Counsel, shares her thoughts and experiences so far on working as an in-house lawyer for the highly successful FTSE 250 homeware retailer. Emily will be part of Dunelm's interview...

read more
Heroes General Counsel, Alastair Zucker

Heroes General Counsel, Alastair Zucker

Heroes General Counsel, Alastair Zucker gives us some insight into what it's like to join a company as it's first in-house lawyer in the very early days dealing with everything from fundraising and M&A, to regulatory compliance and litigation and working solo with...

read more

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