Build a Better Legal Team: Tech GCs Share Tips for Designing an Effective Hiring Process

A successful legal team stems from a thoughtful, intentional hiring process. From sourcing the right applicants to extending fair offers, a streamlined process can help you employ candidates who will be effective in their roles and continue to attract new talent as your team grows.

What does that process look like in fast-moving tech companies? Below, I share insights from my experience hiring teams, along with perspectives from fellow L Suite members leading legal teams at companies like Sphero and Tidelift.

Key Takeaways:

• Use an Applicant Tracking System (ATS) to streamline application review, and utilize a recruiter with legal experience to source quality applicants.

• Establish an interview process that is efficient but thorough. Generally, that consists of an initial screen when the recruiter can check boxes of relevant experience, a one-on-one interview when the hiring manager digs into legal chops, and a panel interview when other team members can assess business and communication skills. Consider involving stakeholders with whom the candidate will interface.

• Include the intended salary range in the application, even if it's not legally required. This attracts a larger pool of candidates while filtering out those with higher expectations, especially those from law firms or larger companies. Additionally, consider offering your “best and final” upfront to ensure an equitable experience.

• Legal communities are tight-knit, and candidates talk. Prioritize a positive candidate experience by emphasizing transparency, clear communication, and timely feedback.

Implement an Applicant Tracking System

One L Suite member, a former General Counsel who now serves as Chief People Officer at a tech company, advises that companies start by implementing an applicant tracking system (ATS). Beyond streamlining the application process, she notes that this can proactively address implicit bias.

The ATS that her company uses, Greenhouse, allows the company to input specific criteria for each job, and interviewers are then required to track applicants’ likelihood of success for each factor through the hiring process. This encourages interviewers to make justified and unbiased decisions.

Source Quality, Targeted Candidates

The GC/Chief People Officer recommends keeping one legal recruiter on staff — even if paid hourly or on a contract basis — to source candidates. “This is always our best source of quality candidates, over referrals by a mile,” she says.

To engage high-quality applicants, also consider where you post your jobs. Listing open positions on sites like GoInhouse and The L Suite can often attract targeted candidates more efficiently than posting on generalized job boards.

To support diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts, she also advises companies to screen job postings for inclusive language and encourage applicants to apply even if they don’t have every listed skill or qualification. This can be especially useful if you want to attract candidates who are currently at law firms and don’t yet have startup experience or who might be coming from a different industry.

In my experience, the more early stage a startup is, the harder it will be to find a candidate with the perfect background or skill set for any role. Business roadmaps may change and unexpected challenges will be aplenty, which may mean that a candidate’s spirit of adaptability and flexibility is more valuable than them meeting every skill or qualification.

AnaLisa Valle, Chief Legal Officer and General Counsel at Sphero, adds that her company is clear about salary from the very beginning of the process. “We post compensation on all of our roles, whether state-required or not,” she says. This can be helpful in weeding out candidates with higher expectations (many coming from big law or larger companies may not want to take a pay cut that’s often required from an earlier stage startup).

Sphero is just one of many companies that take a fully transparent approach to salary. “It’s overall been positive for recruiting,” says Luis Villa, Co-Founder and General Counsel at Tidelift. “Candidates with unrealistic salary expectations don’t have time wasted or waste our time. It’s also a very clear line in the sand about our perspective on gender/racial equity, which is a good thing for recruiting.”

Design an Effective Interview Process

An effective interview process requires more than one interview. The GC/Chief People Officer’s company, for example, starts with a 30-minute screening interview with the legal recruiter, which is followed by a 30-minute interview with a hiring manager and concludes with a panel interview with two to four other people.

An initial screen should focus on determining if the applicant has relevant experience and if the role is aligned with their goals, strengths, and values. This can also be a good opportunity to share the benefits and drawbacks of the role from your perspective to give the candidate realistic expectations. I find that being explicit about expectations helps candidates navigate the dramatic culture shift from a structured firm to a fast-paced tech company. This clarity reduces turnover from misaligned expectations that can't be fully conveyed in a job description, setting new hires up for success.

A subsequent interview offers the chance to see if the candidate has key traits and skills for the role — e.g., flexibility in thinking about risk vs. growth, customer service orientation with non-legal teams, and scrappiness. Many L Suite members recommend using behavioral interview questions to assess candidates’ expertise and qualifications. Asking questions like, “Tell me about a time when you gave what you later thought was the wrong advice and what you learned from the experience,” or “Give me an example of an ambiguous regulatory matter you faced and how you handled it,” provide deep insight into how the interviewee performed in the past — and how they would likely perform in the future. (Read more on crafting interview questions.)

Finally, panel or follow-up interviews allow other leaders and stakeholders to vet the candidate’s collaboration style and ask nuanced questions about their areas of the business. This is especially crucial for candidates who may be coming from a firm or a large in-house team and are not yet accustomed to day-to-day interactions with other departments or rolling up their sleeves for any task, large or small.

Some companies also incorporate an assignment into the interview process by asking a candidate to, for instance, mark up or prepare an issues list for a contract in a timed setting. This allows you to assess how potential employees think in a near-real-world situation, especially under pressure. (Read more on interview assignments.)

Debrief Thoroughly After the Interview

Following the final interview, ask the interviewers to gather and share their feedback. The GC/Chief People Officer recommends starting with the most junior member of the panel, and then moving up to the leader or hiring manager, which ensures that the junior folks’ opinions are heard and aren’t modified based on what they hear from more influential voices. In my experience, how a candidate interacts with employees spanning the hierarchy can be very revealing if there is an obvious delta.

Whether or not your organization utilizes an ATS, I also recommend ensuring that initial feedback is recorded within an hour of the interview — after that timeframe, impressions are no longer as fresh and accurate.

Include HR in the debrief to push back on any feedback that may be biased or race- or gender-based (e.g., “She was disheveled,” or “He had an accent”). “A gentle push can explode implicit bias hidden in a comment like this, so it’s critical,” the hiring expert says.

Use Best Practices When Extending an Offer

Before extending an offer, Valle’s team discusses what they would offer at most, given the candidate’s experience and what they bring to the table. From there, they reach out to the candidate with their “best and final offer.”

“This creates a fair offer process for those who may not be as comfortable negotiating a higher offer,” Valle says. “[It] ensures that everyone gets the highest offer from the start.”

You can boost the chances of closing candidates by asking panelists to reach out to them to congratulate them on the offer and encourage them to accept it.

Across the entire process, prioritize the candidate experience — through transparency, open communication, and feedback. “The market is full of chatter,” says the GC/Chief People Officer. “If you ghost candidates or subject them to a long and confusing process, they’ll let the market know — via Glassdoor, Indeed, Blind, Reddit, etc. Gather their feedback and use it to make your process better.” 

Want feedback on your hiring practice? Looking for best practices to implement? L Suite members can ask questions — and get quick answers — on our Braintrust platform. Apply for membership now.

About The L Suite

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