The Sterling Family Law Show

5 Ways Your Law Firm Job Posting Attracts the Legal Talent You Need - #189

• Jeff Sterling Hughes

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Your law firm job posting is a sales letter, not an HR checkbox. Here's how to write one that actually attracts legal talent.


Most firms can't scale because they can't hire. We'll show you the system we used to build a 27-attorney team at Sterling Lawyers.


Rocket Clicks helped Sterling grow from $0 to $17MM using these exact hiring frameworks.


Job boards are basically Google from 1997, dumb search engines that are easy to hack if you're intentional. We'll walk you through the "Frank Test," why your state bar board might outperform Indeed, and how to write job descriptions that repel wrong-fit applicants before they waste your time. 


Stop treating hiring like an HR task and start treating it like the sales function it actually is.


📲 Subscribe Now: https://www.youtube.com/@karls.anthony

📝 Schedule a FREE Family Law Firm Audit: https://rocketclicks.com/schedule-a-family-law-quick-audit/ 


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📄 CHAPTERS  


0:00 - Why Your Law Firm Job Posting Gets Ignored 

2:08 - Choosing the Right Job Boards: Niche vs. Volume Play 

4:07 - State Bar Websites: The Hidden Talent Goldmine 

7:10 - Law School Job Fairs: Your Unfair Advantage 

7:49 - Recruiting Is Sales: Change Your Mindset 

8:26 - Writing Job Titles That Stop the Scroll 

11:03 - Responsibilities That Sell the Role 

15:04 - Keywords: Hack Job Board Search Engines 

18:20 - Culture Fit: Attract and Repel on Purpose


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Are your job listings failing to bring in the legal talent your firm needs in today's digital age? How you present your openings online can make all the difference. In this episode, we share the best strategies for writing and optimizing online job listings to ensure you're attracting top legal professionals. Welcome back to the Sterling Family Law Show, your go to resource for family law owners looking to drive growth, optimize operations, and boost profitability. I am your host, Tyler Dolph. I'm also the CEO of our law firm, only marketing agency called Rocket Clicks. We specialize in helping family law firms grow through data driven digital strategies and performance marketing. Today, I have with me Tony Karls, who is the co-founder of our very own family law firm called Sterling Lawyers that has grown to over 27 attorneys. And we also have JP VanderLinden, who is our head of operations and client service. He has extensive experience in people operations, specifically in how legal firms can strategically leverage digital platforms to attract and retain the best talent. Today, we're focusing on how to maximize your online job listings to attract top legal professionals, whether it's choosing the right platform or optimizing your content. We are going to give you practical tips for getting the most out of your job postings. All right guys, we are back. Today we are focusing on how to maximize your online jobless things to attract legal professionals. Whether it's choosing the right platform or optimizing your content. We are going to give you practical tips for getting the most out of your job postings. And Tony, I know this is true for our law firm. It's sterling and something I hear from our clients all the time is that they need to find great talent. You know, their oh, we don't want to turn up marketing because we don't have the capacity because we're trying to recruit and we need another attorney or we need another paralegal tip. I'm sure you've heard the exact same thing. This is the most requested service that we don't currently offer to our clients, but that they are looking to fulfill. So, JP, we have you here as our kind of resident, hiring expert to help our listeners with this task. We have five tips that we are going to help them with. The first one being choosing the right job boards. I think we've tried out a lot of them over the years. Where's your, where's your head on this one? Yeah, absolutely. So there's kind of two approaches you can pick either very, niche specific boards that are tailored to like an industry, profession or role, something like that. Or you can kind of, go for the generic boards. And both of these have advantages, right? The obvious advantage to picking a niche board is that, you're going to know that the folks you're talking to are right there, right? It's like kind of like shooting fish in a barrel, like everybody who's on there is, you know, in your space. And then, of course, the general boards is a volume play. And so there's probably a mix of both depending on the role you're recruiting for. I would say that the more senior a role you're shooting for, the more you're going to need to go to those niche boards. And the more early stage your entry level role, the more you're going to go to general board. So what we think about is, we use a lot of the big ones that we use. Indeed, we use LinkedIn. We've also played with some of the aggregators. So a lot of the job boards are fed by kind of centralized, puts. So you put your posting into one place and it ends up on, you know, 52 different job boards. So always looking for for volume play there. But yeah, that's kind of how we think about it is like, we want to get in front of I'm not worried about getting in front of somebody who's, not my target. I'm not really concerned about that because, I'd rather get 100% of my ideal target and someone qualified, then have 100% qualified and miss out on half my ideal target. So I kind of I kind of think about that approach. Now, if you think about niche boards. Tony, I know you've you've got a few that you guys have worked with in the past at Sterling. That maybe you can speak to. Yeah. So real specifically, every every state is going to operate a little differently when you're hiring. Specifically, I'm talking about attorneys, paralegals and intake specialists. And, you know, your office manager roles, those types of roles, those are going to be great, for kind of your more general, general boards that JP was talking about, you know, your, your needs, your your ZipRecruiter, LinkedIn. Those are fantastic. They're for attracting lawyers. It's this is very state dependent situation. So in Wisconsin, we found the most success with with spa. So actually the, the job board on the bar website is a, it's a treasure trove of opportunity. It's where you're going to find the best, the best potential talent that's in-market to do a job, switch. We're going to talk about it. In point number two, if you go to those job boards, the titles are extraordinarily boring and they're not written very well. I don't know why lawyers don't take their their skills of writing and being word doctors to the job boards, but they don't. And it's just it's super, super boring. So we found a lot of opportunity there. But in Wisconsin, it's that in Illinois, the state bar website where the where you can post jobs does not work as well. We think it has a lot more to do with the fact that it's such a big state that people don't go there because it's it becomes too general and too robust. So I can't prove it. I'm only in two states. I've only done this in two states in Wisconsin, Illinois. But the biggest differentiator between the two is that, like the Chicago metro area is almost as big as the whole state of Wisconsin. So, so there's a so each state will operate a little differently, you know, understanding and identifying where your, like how your state operates is going to be really important because there will there will be a normative behavior for the legal industry in terms of like for attorneys, specifically in terms of where they go to look for jobs. Now, it's not saying in Wisconsin we don't use indeed and we don't use LinkedIn, we do. But in terms of what performs better, in Illinois, indeed, in LinkedIn work really well. In Illinois, in Wisconsin, we seem way more success with the state Bar website. The other the other places actually working directly with, your local, law schools. So your, your local law schools have obviously every year a large graduating class and there's a, in the family law space, there's not a lot of representation there. And there are people that are interested. So if you just do the minimum effort and like get involved with their, there's a called their, job fairs. Yeah. Their annual job fairs, I think they do. They typically do two a year. You're going to see success. Your, your, your firm is going to get more well-known. You're going to be more ingratiated with the university. So there's a lot of benefits there. Plus there's not a lot of family lawyers doing it. Most don't take the time or effort or, make the intention to do that. And, then they have to do what we're doing outside of that, which is go to the job boards and hope you can find somebody. So those would be kind of the specifics I would give as it pertains to how do we recruit lawyers and attorneys in the space? I think, you know, I could have said this at the beginning, but recruiting is a sales role, right? You are trying to get someone to believe in your firm and the benefits that you offer, and the value that you provide to your attorneys and to your employees and everything that you do as it relates to recruiting should be under that lens, that people aren't just going to come and beg you for a job, you have to sell them on the idea that your firm is worth working at, which goes into our second point, which is creating enticing job titles, you know, don't just common attorney, use some some fancy language, am I right, JP? Yeah. There's a there's an interesting line here, but you're absolutely right. I mean, we're talking about we're talking about marketing and sales, right? One to many and 1 to 1. And that's, that's what your recruiting function, is. And what I would say is, like, you still need to be accurate. You need to you need to accurately describe the actual job title in the post. You need to be you need to follow all the proper, regulations there. But you also have an opportunity when specifically when advertising a, a posting to say this is the title and here's why you care. Right? And so you can put modifiers and qualifiers on it. Right. This is, high energy. This is, strategic. This is experienced. And then like, we, we, we want to say like, you're not just, you're not just a paralegal. We want a family law paralegal. And so, like, you can put these modifiers on and then there's also space in there depending on the posting to put additional kind of like calls to action in there, which is high growth opportunity or join a great culture, things like that. Because really, what you're trying to get people do is stop scrolling because they're looking at 52 postings that all say, you know, attorney, attorney, attorney, attorney, attorney. And this, like yours is going to stand out if you give them a little bit more, to, to index on in that moment. Yeah. I would say this is super true. This is one I mentioned in the first first point here. Obviously for for Sterling and for rocket folks, we, you know, we kind of start from a marketing and sales perspective. So this was something that we understood beforehand. But it if you go to these job boards and you look what what JP just said, it's 100% correct. They're all just going to say attorney family law attorney, lawyer like in there. They're all just like super bland, super, not interesting titles. So if you can write one that's slightly more interesting, they're going to stop scrolling for like, oh, let me look at this one. This one looks interesting. And like that's all you're trying to do. This is a marketing and sales opportunity. So writing engaging job titles is super important. It might seem like a, an unknown, and unimportant thing to do, but I would say it's probably the thing that we've, we've done the best in terms of how we go to market with these different things so that we can actually stand out on these job boards. Because attention is attention is king, at least in these spaces. Hundred percent, I think key in keeping with this theme, right, of being interesting and selling is that we have to do the same thing when we talk about key responsibilities and impact. Yeah. So if you're going to get a high quality candidate, they're not just there to push buttons and draw a paycheck. They're going to want to know, that the purpose for existing in their role is high. They're going to want to know that the impact that they're having on the families they're working with on their community, on the world at large is there. And so you need to have this clarity that you're describing of what are you going to do and why does it matter at the end of the day? And that'll resonate with somebody who's purpose driven, who's looking for, hey, I don't just want a job. I actually want to show up and spend my 40 to 60 hours a week moving things forward in the world so that I can go home at night exhausted and going, man, I really made a difference today. And so this is your chance to call it out again. It's marketing. You're selling a vision. You're selling an outcome. You're selling a future. And so really make it clear of like, yes, this is what you're going to do. You know, you're going to manage files, you're going to work directly with clients, but also you're going to meet people in their hardest moments and provide support. You're going to deliver the best possible outcomes, for your clients. So this is where you can sell all of that. So someone's going to read and go, man, that's what I want. That's what I want my career to feel like. Yeah. I would I would also add like, like if you're to think about the outline of a job posting, like one of the things that I think is really important that's often missed is most of the time people are going to port responsibilities and like competencies that are required or some, some semblance of that duties of the role. That's all boring. Like it's important, but it's boring. Like one of the there's two sections that you have on there. At a minimum. What is the ideal candidate look like and describe who they are in detail. And it should be exclusionary language. It should like include exactly who you want and intentionally exclude people that don't match that. The goal is not to get everybody to apply, it's to get the right person to apply. So who does? Who is this? Who does this? Who fits this role well? What do they look like? Is a section. The other is like, why? What is the impact you're making? Why are you why why is this role very important to the to the firm at large, to the community? And for your like, for, the team at the organization. So like, if we can describe both of those things, I know have a way more engaging post than everybody else who just has. You know, I need an attorney who's got 3 to 5 years of family law experience that went to law school and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Like, congratulations. You know, how to draft an, do negotiations and do those things just like every other attorney in the marketplace. So you like just describing those things? You haven't done anything to set yourself apart, like go into detail and describe those two sections. Use your ability to be really concise and compelling with language, because lawyers can't do that. They're very good at that. Leverage that skill in this area because this is this is a high impact area to do it. actually think family law attorneys have an advantage here. You get to help couples and families during one of the most difficult times that they're going to have in their life. And if you can sell people on the idea that you are the best at that, or that you've saved this many families or this many children, that can be extremely compelling to a young attorney looking to make a difference. Hey, family law firm leaders. My partner, Tony Karl's just released his book where he lays bare our precise blueprint for growing sterling lawyers from 0 to 17 million. This is the blueprint that we still use daily. And Tony explains it in very simple terms. The truth is, this is not simple to do. Success requires and demands hard work. But if you have the patience and the work ethic to do it, your family, law firm will succeed. Okay. We're moving on to number four, which is use keywords to boost SEO and Searchability. So we're gonna get into the marketing weeds a little bit. JP tell us more about this. Yeah. So again, every job board functions largely off two operators. One is a browse and one is a search. One of the first things you do and you end up on all of these boards is they say type your query in here. And so what that does is then it goes to every one of those job listings, and it looks for listings that match or are similar to an intent, the queries that somebody put in. So if somebody types in litigation, it's going to find job posts that have litigation listed as one of the responsibilities. And so what you put into your, job post, you need to be intentional with the language and think about what is a, applicant going to be looking for, what are they actually going to type in? And this might be worth even like, you know, getting some of your getting some of your internal ISPs, the folks who, who look exactly like, hey, I want to get more like Frank. If I can get more people like Frank, I'm gonna be really happy. Hey, Frank, if you were doing this, what would you. What would you put in here? Like, get some feedback on it. But, like, you want to be really intentional with this language to describe actions, to describe responsibilities, to describe the outcomes in the language of your applicants, of your target pool, so that when they search, they see familiar language. This is also helpful when they land on the job posts and they read things and go, oh, this sounds like me. This sounds like what I want. So you get a dual benefit from this. But yeah, it's intended to get your post more visibility, more, more eyes on your advertisement for your open position. Yeah. I mean, one of the things that we use in your we talked about titles, obviously some of this should be in the title of your job post, but don't overly stuff it. Just put it in your job post. Alternate position title names and like, just list them all. They're just put it way at the bottom of your job post. And what will happen is what JP just mentioned is when people come in and they search for the alternate, not the primary, your job posting will show up where all the other job postings that would that didn't do this will they'll they're not going to show up. So you're going to have inherently a significant advantage there just by being more intentional about, you know, overall what is you know, what does Frank call this? If he was going to go do it, great. What are other things you could search for like literally just going and sitting next to that person at their desk and being like, hey, if you were looking for a job, what would you what would you type into? Indeed. Cool. If if so, if that didn't work and nothing came up there, what would you type like? What else would you type in? Those are all things that you should have in your job job posting, because now you're going to show up for all the things that are potentially going to be searched for. So and this is this will be the SEO portion. Job boards are really, really, really bad dumb search engines. But they are search engines inherently. But they're like Google from 1997, not what we have today. That should just be an easy to hack right? Exactly. That's why just be really blunt and dumb about it and how you're how you're doing this. it. Okay. Our final point, which is showcase your firm's culture and values. We've hit on this a little bit, but I really think that this is the biggest sales proponent of the recruiting process and that candidates have to understand why you're different. Yeah. So Tony mentioned this earlier, that part of the purpose of your advertisement of your job opening is to eliminate people from the application process. It takes time and effort to sift through all the applicants. You're going to get to talk to people to do screening interviews, resume reviews, and spending that time on somebody who's not values aligned, who's not culture aligned is is a waste of time, resources. And it's a waste of their time, too, because they're going to go through the application process and it's a bad fit. So even thinking of your process, they're going to be annoyed. Be like, yeah, I don't know if I really want to, you know, I don't really want to end up here anyway. And so being really clear and upfront is the kindest thing you can do for potential applicant and for your own team. And so, you know, Tony talked about like the it should outline exactly who you're looking for in positive terms. And it should also eliminate people in negative terms. And so, you know, you should you should use language in there that is evocative, that is going to push people emotionally to connect or not connect. So you get the appropriate response. And, and hopefully you'll listen to all the stuff we've talked about developing a clear mission, vision and values. You've got that outline in such a way where it's a very polarizing yes no response. And like that needs to be very clear upfront and lead with that. Like, I don't even want you scrolling and reading the what you do if you don't understand why we do it and how we do it. Because if you're not aligned with that, let's just stop here. Let's not waste each other's time. So again, we're back to we're back to marketing. We're back to sales. We're back to qualifying the prospect and saying like, hey, let's make sure that we're a good fit for each other before we move forward. You know, I would I would just add to that like the, the primary purpose of a job posting or the primary function of a job posting is a sale, and it's the sale of a new potential team member. So if you think it's something different, you're looking at it wrong. If you treat the applicants as they're coming in, not as hot leads. So like I know we've talked about in our marketing series, if you're not responding within the first five minutes, you're likely response of that lead is really low. The same thing holds true with applicants. They're not just waiting around for you to give them a call back. You got to treat them as if they're they're a valuable lead that just entered your system. So the more intentional you can be, on inclusionary and exclusionary, you know, content in the posting and like, clearly describe your company and your values, all of that stuff. The less screening you're going to have to do because you're hopefully just a bunch of them aren't going to click. Yes. I'd like to apply that and be like, this doesn't sound like me. I don't want this group that's good that I don't we don't feel bad about that. We just know this isn't a good place to fit. I don't want to fire you in the future for finding it out after I hired you. So I would just, you know, lean into. Lean into. This is a sales sales letter for your organization that includes some descriptions on what you what this individual person is going to do from a contribution perspective. Yes. And if any of this feels like, oh, how am I going to sell them? I don't know why our firm is different. Go back and listen to our vision mission and values, podcast so that you can establish those first and then you can sell future team members on them. Gentlemen, appreciate the time. Excited to get this out into the world.

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Jeff Hughes

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