Legal technology companies build software for lawyers, courts and legal departments. They must hire engineers and lawyers into one team, and keep both speaking the same language while customers wait for fixes and features.
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Share your requirementsA legal technology company builds tools for case management, contract drafting, research, compliance tracking or court filing. The team mixes software engineers and designers with lawyers or law graduates who shape the content and rules, product managers who bridge the two, and customer support or onboarding staff who train law firms and legal departments. Customers are careful and slow to change habits, and a wrong output in legal software erodes trust quickly. Engineers may know little of the law, while lawyers may not understand release cycles or why a feature takes weeks. Sales is long, with demos for partners and approval by many people. Small teams carry many roles, and the same person may fix a bug and then train a client. See also HR for professional services.
These are the places the people side of this kind of business tends to give way. The rest of this page works through them.
HR here has to work for each of these groups, not only the office. The set-up below is written with all of them in mind.
GullyHR runs talent acquisition for permanent roles in legal technology companies. For each role we agree the job description with you, find and screen candidates against it, and support the offer through to joining. Tell us the role and the number of people, and we start there.
We recruit permanent employees. We do not supply contract or temporary staff.
Every business interviews, but few have a written process that works the same way for every role and every interviewer. GullyHR designs yours, from the role brief to the offer, trains your managers to run it, and can run it for you on the roles you hand us.
We agree what the role must deliver, the must-have and nice-to-have skills, and how each will be scored.
Screening call, assessment, interview rounds and decision points, sized to the role and the number of people you hire.
Structured questions for each role family and a rating guide, so two interviewers judge the same answer the same way.
A short briefing for your managers on what to ask, what to avoid and how to give a clear yes or no.
Who approves, how the offer is made, and how candidates are kept informed from first call to joining.
A legal rule is explained in legal terms, and the engineer builds something different, so reviews turn into disputes.
The same person tests, supports, trains and writes the user guide, and nobody owns any of it.
Rules and forms change, and nobody is clearly responsible for updating the product when they do.
One wrong output sends a law firm back to its spreadsheet, and support staff face the anger.
Months of demos without a decision leave sales and support weary and unsure of targets.
Legal staff sit apart from developers, feel ignored in planning and leave.
Staff touch law firms' documents and matter data, and loose access habits create risk.
Larger tech firms offer higher pay and clearer growth paths.
Start with the topics that matter most here: Organisation Design; HR Technology and Automation; Recruitment and Talent Acquisition. Then work through the rest. Each topic is written for professional services, not in general.
Structure, reporting lines and who is allowed to decide what.
Records that survive people, and approvals that do not queue.
Requisition to joining, the same way every time.
How many people, in which roles, by when — and what they will cost.
A first day that is the same for the fifth joiner as the first.
Records, attendance, leave and the day-to-day HR that must simply work.
Salary structure, payroll inputs and a month that closes on time.
Goals, reviews and ratings that hold up in a conversation.
Training planned from need rather than from the calendar.
Named backups for the roles that cannot be vacant.
Communication, recognition and the conditions people actually work in.
Two routes — one for complaints, one for conduct — kept separate.
Policies a manager can apply, and obligations with owners and dates.
Induction, records, incident reporting and follow-through.
Who leaves, when, why — and which of them mattered.
Resignation to relieving letter, in a defined order.
A short monthly pack management actually reads.
An HR function that runs the same way every month.
The pieces a legal technology companies business puts in place, in an order that makes each easier. Open any card for the detail.
A one-page description for engineer, legal content specialist, product manager and support, with who decides what.
A one-page description for engineer, legal content specialist, product manager and support, with who decides what. See role design and pay.
Plain definitions of terms and rules that engineers and lawyers both use, kept current and held in documentation.
Plain definitions of terms and rules that engineers and lawyers both use, kept current and held in documentation.
A named person who tracks changes in rules and forms, and a dated list of product items that depend on them.
A named person who tracks changes in rules and forms, and a dated list of product items that depend on them.
Who may view customer matter data, how access is logged and what happens when a person leaves.
Who may view customer matter data, how access is logged and what happens when a person leaves. Teach it at onboarding.
A seat for the legal lead in product planning and review, with a regular joint session for engineers and lawyers.
A seat for the legal lead in product planning and review, with a regular joint session for engineers and lawyers.
A ladder for engineers and another for legal content staff, with the skills for each step.
A ladder for engineers and another for legal content staff, with the skills for each step. See learning routines.
Before changing anything, find out what is true today. These checks take an afternoon and tell you which of the topics above to start with.
Share your requirementsConfirm with a qualified professional. What applies to you depends on your business, your state and your arrangements, and it changes. This page describes practice. It does not state a legal position.
The services below fit this kind of business best. Each starts by recording where you stand, and every later report compares against that. We do not promise outcomes.
Pay bands for engineers and legal staff on the same footing.
Role descriptions and a shared glossary that bridge two professions.
New hires learn data rules and the legal context of the product early.
Engineers learn the legal basics and lawyers learn how software is built.
Start with a free conversation, or see the paid HR Diagnostic.
Understand the business, its workforce, current processes and HR challenges.
Find the missing, weak, inconsistent or person-dependent processes.
Create the structure, processes, policies, SOPs, dashboards and systems needed.
Help HR and department managers actually adopt the new system.
Digitise repetitive and approval-based workflows where it is worth doing.
Track hiring, attendance, employee cost, performance, training and attrition.
Strengthen the people-management system continuously, not once.
From the GullyHR blog: one on HR in professional services, and one on each of the topics this page points to.
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Give them a shared glossary, joint planning sessions and worked examples. Respect for each other's craft grows when they see real cases together.
One named person, normally on the legal content side, with a tracker of items that depend on rules. Without an owner, updates are late.
Limit access to those who need it, log access, remove it on leaving and brief staff at joining. Confirm your legal duties with a qualified professional.
Give them a voice in product choices and a visible career path. Treat their content as part of the product.
Hire for clear roles, test with a real task and keep a short onboarding. Blurred roles become costly as the team grows.
Who owns which work between engineers, lawyers and support, how legal updates are tracked, who sees customer data and why people leave. Role descriptions, a legal-update owner or a two-track ladder is a likely start. Scope, timing and fees are put in writing after that talk.
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