Biglaw, Headhunters / Recruiters, Job Searches, Lateral Moves

Transforming And Enhancing The Lateral Hiring Process

Is the traditional model for lateral hiring about to get disrupted?

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As we have chronicled in these pages, technology is transforming all facets of the legal profession. It’s changing the way that litigators conduct discovery and try cases (and the way that judges decide those cases). It’s changing the way that transactional attorneys do deals.

And it’s changing the way that lawyers get hired. One new startup, Lateral.ly, provides an example of how technology could make a difference.

I recently spoke with Micah Springut, founder and CEO of Lateral.ly, about his company and how it might transform the lateral hiring market. Here’s a (condensed and edited) write-up of our conversation.

ATL: What do you see as the problems in the current model for legal recruiting?

What’s interesting about legal recruiting—at least lateral recruiting—is that it hasn’t really changed in decades. Lawyers still rely on middlemen to get access to a lot of the opportunities out there.

It’s kind of unbelievable that if you’re a lawyer and you want to know what jobs are on the market, you either have to check hundreds of websites or pick up the phone every time a headhunter calls. And even then, the headhunter isn’t giving you the full picture. Lawyers and firms would be much better off if they were all on a single platform where they could easily find and communicate with each other.

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ATL: How does Lateral.ly work? Can it solve the problems in the market?

With Lateral.ly, we wanted to make a central platform—a single space where lawyers could come to see all the jobs, and firms could come to find all the lawyers.

So what we did was we partnered with a lot of firms to get their opportunities listed on our site. As a lawyer, when you sign up on Lateral.ly, you enter your interests and you can see all the jobs on the market that match. You also have a profile that you fill out, and to apply to any job you just allow a firm to view your profile. The firm takes a look and if they’re also interested, they’ll get in contact to learn more or to invite you to interview.

It’s a straightforward tool, but it completely changes the way legal recruiting works. This kind of transparency has been missing from the market for a long time.

ATL: Has anyone mentioned that this sounds like online dating?

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It’s not the first time we’ve heard that. We’ve been demoing for firms before, trying to give a serious presentation, and someone at the firm will shout: “Oh! It’s Tinder for lawyers!”

What makes it similar is that you see all these opportunities you might not have seen before, you click a few buttons, and you can get responses back. If you talk to many lawyers about why they haven’t lateraled yet, it’s often because they haven’t had time to even look. Now they can check out the market whenever they have a spare moment.

What we don’t have here is firms swiping left on a lawyer’s profile by accident. There is a human element to the process and we always follow up with firms to make sure profiles landed on the right desk.

ATL: It sounds like Lateral.ly is popular with firms. What kind of adoption have you seen?

We’re working with most of the Am Law 100, a lot of Am Law 200 firms, and we’ll be adding many more boutique firms and companies in the coming months. We’ve already shown lawyers something like 1,600 opportunities.

The firms love it; they’ve never had this much access to candidates. They’re seeing really quality lawyers on Lateral.ly, and that was essential for getting firms to be part of this.

ATL: How did you come up with the idea for Lateral.ly? What’s the inspiration?

Our team was working on a lawyer search engine last year. We collected a lot of data about law firms thinking it would be useful to in-house counsel. But it turned out that the people most interested in it were our friends working at law firms who wanted to use it to find better opportunities.

So we decided to focus full-time on this problem instead. We started Lateral.ly in the spring, and the first person we helped find a job was my co-founder’s roommate.

ATL: How do you see Lateral.ly affecting the traditional legal recruiting industry? Could it be disruptive, or complementary, or something else?

In general, technology has not been kind to middlemen. Look at the travel industry. You used to have to call a travel agent to book a flight; now you go on Kayak.

I don’t see how the traditional recruiting industry can survive another decade if it’s just business as usual. The advantages of moving this process online are just too great: more information, direct connections to firms, the whole market in front of you on a screen.

ATL: So will headhunters just disappear?

Not right away. What headhunters do well is sell lawyers on lateraling and on moving to the handful of firms that they work with. They’re still able to pick up a phone and find a lawyer willing to listen.

But firms are looking for a change. They don’t see 98 percent of headhunters as adding value and they understand that relying on them to cold-call hundreds of associates just to get one in the door isn’t the most effective way to find talent. Firms are going to learn how to attract lawyers on their own and they’re doing that by using tools like Lateral.ly that help them reach out and communicate with candidates.

ATL: So what’s next for Lateral.ly?

Getting even more opportunities on the platform is our focus now. We want thousands, not just hundreds, of employers there. Employers can sign up on Lateral.ly and get access in no time, so I expect we’ll be growing quickly in the next few months.

We’re currently focused on associate hiring, and as part of the launch, we are providing a $5,000 signing bonus to lawyers that get a job on Lateral.ly and a $2,000 referral bonus when someone they invited to Lateral.ly gets a job. Anyone can create a personal invite link on our website.

ATL: It’s an interesting and promising model. Congratulations to you and the Lateral.ly team on your launch, and thanks for taking the time to chat.

Lateral.ly [official website]

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