Attracting and retaining legal talent in small to medium sized law firms

In this article we discuss what law firm hiring managers can do to assist with talent attraction and recruiting top talent to their firm. Read on to discover small changes you can implement to ensure you can help attract the right lawyer to fill that next available role.

In Melbourne’s legal market, competition for high-performing lawyers and particularly lawyers at the 3–5 PAE level, remains intense. Demand across litigation, insolvency, employment law, and family law continues to outstrip supply, while even traditionally “steady” areas such as commercial and property law remain challenging when it comes to securing standout candidates.

For law firm hiring managers responsible for building and sustaining high-performing teams, understanding the realities of the current legal industry recruitment market is essential. In this article, we share our insights drawn from 50+ years of legal industry recruitment and our conversations with candidates and firms right across Melbourne.

Understanding the current market

The legal talent landscape is candidate-tight (still!). Firms are not only competing on salary but increasingly on flexibility, culture, values alignment, and long-term development pathways.

Over the past two to three years, lawyers have shifted their expectations. Where hybrid work was once a differentiator between offers, is now a baseline assumption. Firms resistant to remote or hybrid options generally see fewer applicants and longer time-to-hire.

Candidates also scrutinise a firm’s values and purpose more carefully than ever. They want clarity around how performance is measured, how wellbeing is supported, and how career progression is managed and attained.

Encouragingly, most Melbourne firms are keeping pace. Having said that, the gap between “keeping pace” and “standing out” continues to widen.

Attraction strategies that actually work

What we are seeing is that the firms who are winning the competition for talent do five things exceptionally well:

1. Act quickly and communicate well

Top firms move decisively. They understand that quality candidates often have multiple confirmed interviews and even multiple job offers. Delays, especially those between interview stages can signal disorganisation or disinterest.

Hiring managers who stay close to the process, remain responsive, and keep decision-making moving almost always achieve better outcomes.

2. Sell the role and sell the firm

Interviews are a two-way street. High-performing firms treat them as an opportunity to demonstrate their culture, values, Employee Value Proposition (EVP), and leadership style and not to simply assess the candidate.

3. Develop a strong and compelling Employee Value Proposition (EVP)

The EVP elements that we see resonating most with Melbourne lawyers include:

Reasonable billable expectations (typically 5–6 hours per day)
Clear progression pathways, ideally documented so expectations are transparent and measurable
Hybrid working built into policy, not just informally offered
Market-leading parental leave and family support

4. Optimise job ads

A job ad alone is rarely enough to secure the legal talent you are looking for. Passive talent engagement, consistent market presence, and recruiter-led sourcing all significantly increase reach and quality.

Candidates tend not to be interested in vague job ads, unclear job descriptions, or generic requirements that do not reflect the reality of the role.

This is where an industry specialist recruiter can really help. The more information we receive about the organisation, the team, the leadership styles, the culture, then the more targeted and effective the attraction strategy becomes.

5. Improve the candidate experience

How do you improve the candidate experience with your firm from their very first impression through to the day they start with you?

Small but high-impact improvements can include:

Offering candidates the choice of online or in-person interviews to speed up scheduling
Fast, courteous communication at every stage, respecting that their time is valuable
Making sure candidates feel welcomed, respected, and important to you during the recruitment process

They might sound like common sense, but we have found that these small elements differentiate firms instantly.

Retention strategies that actually work

Retention challenges often stem from issues we see well before a resignation occurs.

Why lawyers leave

We talk to many lawyers across all levels and from boutique to top tier firms. Generally, we find that their reasons for leaving tend to include:

Chronic lack of resourcing and workload pressure
Burnout
Poor communication from partners about long-term career paths
Uncertainty about progression opportunities

1. Supporting early-career lawyers

Turnover is highest at the 2–4 PAE mark, yet this is also when lawyers form the strongest professional loyalties. Firms that invest in clear guidance, coaching, and transparent pathways tend to retain their emerging leaders far more effectively.

2. What mid-tier and boutique firms get right

Many smaller firms do well at talent attraction because they:

Provide genuine flexibility
Actively seek feedback and develop policies with staff input
Ensure partners remain approachable and invested in individual growth. This creates a sense of being known, valued, and supported which candidates repeatedly cite as a reason to stay.

3. Culture, flexibility and wellbeing

Almost every candidate we speak to wants some version of flexibility. Post-pandemic, flexibility means more than just hybrid working from home and may be different depending on the individual. It now encompasses:

Adjusted hours
Compressed weeks
Trust-based scheduling
A culture that measures outcomes, not desk time

On wellbeing, many firms offer similar benefits on paper. What differentiates the ‘standout’ firms from those with repeat high turnover is that standout firms are consistently described as environments where people want to stay because EVP promises match lived experience.

Transparent leadership communication, regular check-ins, and open dialogue about workload and expectations also significantly strengthen culture and retention.

4. Future-focused workforce strategy

A long-term workforce plan is no longer optional. One of the legal industry’s most pressing question is whether they are bringing in enough graduates to meet demand in three years’ time.

Hiring Managers should consider ensuring that business leaders are succession planning and talent mapping. Both are important in a market where mid-level lawyers are permanently in shortage and where those same mid-level lawyers are on the lookout for career development opportunities. Firms that monitor graduate turnover, identify high-potential talent, and build structured development pipelines will be far better positioned to weather ongoing market pressures.

For Hiring Managers, there are two challenges. Attract the right people today while building the workforce your firm will rely on tomorrow. In a tight and fast-moving market like Melbourne, the firms that act decisively, communicate transparently, and invest in their people’s future will continue to secure and keep the best talent. Some law firms have demonstrated this over time with very low staff turnover rates. We see this demonstrated daily when lawyers at this firm are reluctant to leave or consider other opportunities!

If you’d like tailored insights or support navigating your next legal hire, our team at Legal People would love to assist. You can contact us at info@legalpeople.com.au.

Attracting and retaining legal talent in small to medium sized law firms