Chicago-based mid-sized law firm Gould and Ratner has successfully transformed its talent acquisition strategy through the adoption of Workable, an Applicant Tracking System (ATS). This strategic move has enabled the firm to overcome the inherent complexities of legal recruiting, streamline operations, and support ambitious expansion plans, all while maintaining a lean, one-person talent acquisition department. The implementation has yielded significant improvements in efficiency, candidate pipeline longevity, stakeholder collaboration, and overall employer branding, demonstrating the critical role of technology in modern professional services.
Gould and Ratner: A Profile in Growth and Specialization
Gould and Ratner is a distinguished mid-sized law firm with a rich history, headquartered in Chicago. With approximately 115 employees, including roughly 60 attorneys, the firm boasts diverse practice areas spanning real estate, corporate law, litigation, and various specialized fields. Its reputation is built on delivering sophisticated legal services to a broad client base. In an increasingly competitive legal market, securing top-tier talent is paramount for a firm of Gould and Ratner’s stature to maintain its competitive edge and uphold its commitment to client excellence. The firm’s recent expansion into Denver, growing its office there from a single employee to seven in just 18 months, underscores its growth trajectory and the escalating demands on its talent acquisition capabilities.
The Unique Challenges of Legal Talent Acquisition
Hiring attorneys, particularly for specialized roles within a mid-sized firm, presents a distinct set of challenges that differ significantly from general corporate recruiting. The process demands a meticulous level of precision, a deep understanding of practice area nuances, and often operates on extended timelines. For Gould and Ratner, where over 75% of annual hires are for attorney roles—ranging from associates to partners—these complexities are amplified.
Attorney positions typically require candidates with specific academic credentials, relevant practice expertise, and often a particular stage in their career development. Identifying and securing such individuals can be a protracted endeavor, frequently extending beyond a year. This lengthy recruitment cycle is a significant differentiator. Unlike many other industries where time-to-hire is measured in weeks or a few months, legal recruitment demands patience and a robust system to track candidates over extended periods. Industry benchmarks for specialized legal roles often indicate an average time-to-hire exceeding 90 days, with many high-level or niche positions requiring 6 to 18 months to successfully fill.
Before the integration of Workable, Gould and Ratner faced substantial hurdles in managing these long-running, intricate searches. The absence of a dedicated, purpose-built system meant that documenting every interaction, preserving interview notes across multiple rounds, and efficiently surfacing promising candidates from previous searches was a meaningful challenge. For Dan Minjock, the firm’s Director of Talent Acquisition—a department of one responsible for approximately 20 hires per year—the margin for error or disorganization was effectively zero. Managing multiple active searches simultaneously, each potentially involving up to five interview rounds spread across several days, underscored the urgent need for a more structured and automated approach.
The Catalyst for Change: Dan Minjock’s Strategic Adoption of Workable
Dan Minjock joined Gould and Ratner two years ago, bringing with him a strategic vision for modernizing the firm’s talent acquisition processes. Upon his arrival, Workable was a new platform to the firm, and Minjock spearheaded its adoption from the outset. His immediate priority was to implement a system capable of handling the inherent complexity of legal recruiting without imposing an additional burden on the senior attorneys and practice chairs who would be integral to the hiring process.
Minjock recognized that any new system needed to be intuitively designed, minimizing the learning curve for busy legal professionals. The goal was to empower, not encumber, the firm’s leadership in their crucial role in talent selection. Workable proved to be the ideal solution, delivering on both counts. Its visual pipeline provided the necessary organizational backbone for managing long-horizon searches, allowing Minjock to track candidates through various stages with clarity. The platform’s seamless integration with LinkedIn Recruiter significantly reduced manual administrative tasks, a critical factor for a solo recruiter. Furthermore, Workable’s user-friendly interface ensured that adoption by the firm’s practice chairs, often a significant hurdle in professional services firms, became a non-issue.
Transformative Outcomes: How Workable Redefined Hiring at Gould and Ratner
The implementation of Workable has ushered in a new era of efficiency and strategic capability for Gould and Ratner’s talent acquisition function, impacting several key areas of the firm’s operations.
1. Enhanced Pipeline Longevity and Strategic Candidate Management
Legal recruiting, particularly for highly specialized roles, often necessitates a degree of patience and foresight. A stellar candidate for an environmental law position, for instance, might be the right person at the wrong time – perhaps unavailable for another year, or simply not yet ready to make a career move. Workable has proven instrumental in allowing Gould and Ratner to maintain these crucial long-term relationships. The platform enables Minjock to keep such candidates actively in the pipeline, meticulously document every interaction, and revisit the relationship precisely when the timing aligns for both parties.
Minjock points to a concrete example where a candidate, maintained in the pipeline for over a year, was ultimately hired. This successful recruitment was directly attributable to the firm’s ability to preserve organized, detailed notes and a comprehensive interaction history within Workable. "We don’t ever wanna miss a great person," Minjock emphasized, "And I think Workable makes sure that we don’t." This capability extends beyond singular hires; the robust documentation allowed another candidate to be seamlessly transitioned from one open search to a different, more suitable role, ultimately becoming a finalist for that position. The ability to retrieve comprehensive historical data on candidates is invaluable, particularly when senior attorneys are involved. As Minjock highlighted, "There’s no way the lawyers could remember what they interviewed the guy about a year ago if we didn’t document it." This feature not only prevents the loss of exceptional talent but also significantly reduces the need to restart costly and time-consuming searches from scratch, delivering substantial value to the firm.
2. Seamless Multi-City Expansion without Added Infrastructure
When Gould and Ratner embarked on its strategic expansion into Denver, scaling that office from one to seven employees, the logistical challenges for talent acquisition could have been formidable. However, with Workable in place, Dan Minjock’s recruiting infrastructure did not require any additional scaling or investment. The platform adeptly absorbed the increased workload and geographical complexity.
Within Workable, opening a role in a new market is a straightforward process of specifying the location – be it Chicago-only, Denver-only, or both. The system then intelligently handles the downstream complexities, including generating separate LinkedIn job posts tailored for each market, as LinkedIn’s platform structure requires. What could have easily escalated into a significant operational hurdle, potentially necessitating additional headcount or specialized tools, was instead integrated into existing workflows with no disruption. This capability allowed the Denver expansion to proceed smoothly and efficiently, underscoring Workable’s role as a scalable solution that supports the firm’s strategic growth without proportionate increases in administrative overhead. The cost savings from avoiding additional recruiting infrastructure or personnel for the expansion are substantial, further validating the platform’s value proposition.
3. Empowering Stakeholder Collaboration and Attorney Adoption
A critical success factor for any talent acquisition platform in a professional services environment is the adoption and active engagement of senior stakeholders, particularly partners and practice chairs. At Gould and Ratner, each practice area is overseen by a practice chair—a senior attorney with a profound investment in the quality and fit of new team members. Getting these busy, high-value professionals to consistently engage with a new recruiting platform demands an interface that is genuinely intuitive, leaving no room for a steep learning curve.
Workable has excelled in this regard. All four of Gould and Ratner’s practice chairs actively use the platform. They independently review candidate profiles, leave detailed evaluations, and track pipeline stages without encountering friction or expressing complaints. The visual organization of Workable’s process flow, with clearly defined stages for first-round, second-round interviews, and beyond, provides every collaborator with the necessary visibility and context. This ease of use fosters greater collaboration and ensures that critical feedback is captured systematically. Minjock’s succinct summary of the adoption experience speaks volumes: "So easy a lawyer can do it." This level of independent engagement from senior attorneys is a testament to Workable’s design and its ability to seamlessly integrate into the demanding schedules of legal professionals, thereby streamlining the decision-making process and reducing recruitment cycle times.
4. Significant Time Savings for a Solo Talent Acquisition Professional
For a solo recruiter like Dan Minjock, who manages a portfolio of hard-to-fill roles, time lost to manual administrative tasks directly translates to reduced capacity for high-value candidate engagement. Workable’s robust automation features and integrations have provided substantial relief. The LinkedIn Recruiter integration stands out as one of Minjock’s most relied-upon features, praised for its consistent reliability. This integration, combined with the platform’s ability to simultaneously post job openings to multiple job boards, recovers an estimated 5 hours per week that would otherwise be consumed by tedious administrative overhead.
These 5 recovered hours are not merely an abstract efficiency gain; they represent tangible capacity that Minjock can reallocate to strategic sourcing, building deeper relationships with prospective candidates, conducting more thorough screenings, and proactively nurturing the firm’s talent pipeline. In a solo talent acquisition function, such time savings are transformative, enabling one individual to manage a workload that would typically require multiple recruiters, further enhancing the cost-effectiveness of the firm’s talent strategy.
5. Fortifying Employer Brand and Ensuring Compliance
Beyond operational efficiencies, Workable has also strengthened Gould and Ratner’s employer brand and provided meaningful protection in compliance contexts. The platform’s comprehensive documentation record has proven invaluable. On several occasions, when outside agencies have attempted to claim placement fees for candidates already within Gould and Ratner’s active pipeline, the firm has been able to swiftly and unequivocally demonstrate the prior relationship through Workable’s detailed interaction history. This "paper trail" requires no extra effort to maintain, as it is an inherent byproduct of using the platform as intended, offering a robust defense against potential disputes and unwarranted fees.
On the candidate-facing side, Workable’s automated communication features have profoundly impacted the applicant experience. Automated rejection emails, for instance, have generated an unexpected but welcome response: candidates routinely express gratitude to the firm for keeping them informed, even when their applications are not progressing. This level of professional communication, often overlooked in high-volume recruiting, significantly enhances the firm’s reputation. Furthermore, the Workable-built careers page goes live within seconds of a role being published, presenting a polished, professional, and mobile-responsive experience that reinforces the firm’s esteemed reputation from the very first touchpoint a potential candidate has with Gould and Ratner. This consistent, positive candidate experience is crucial in attracting and retaining top legal talent in a competitive market.
Broader Impact and Strategic Implications
For a firm of Gould and Ratner’s size and operational complexity, Workable is far more than a mere productivity tool; it serves as the foundational operational infrastructure that renders a one-person recruiting function not only viable but exceptionally effective. Dan Minjock, as the sole talent acquisition professional, adeptly manages every hire across two distinct cities, multiple intricate practice areas, and searches that frequently extend well beyond a year. This remarkable capability is exclusively attributable to a platform that consistently keeps every candidate meticulously organized, ensures every key stakeholder remains aligned, and maintains every promising relationship within immediate reach.
The successful implementation of Workable at Gould and Ratner exemplifies a broader trend in professional services: the increasing reliance on sophisticated technology to optimize core business functions. In an era where top legal talent is fiercely contested, a streamlined, professional, and efficient hiring process is a significant competitive differentiator. By investing in an intuitive and powerful ATS, Gould and Ratner has not only addressed immediate operational challenges but has also strategically positioned itself for future growth and sustained excellence. The firm’s ability to expand into new markets and attract high-caliber attorneys without disproportionately increasing its talent acquisition overhead speaks volumes about the platform’s strategic value. As Minjock aptly summarized, "For the relative low investment of what it costs, it’s very high value for us." This sentiment underscores the profound return on investment and the strategic advantage gained by Gould and Ratner through its partnership with Workable, solidifying its standing as a forward-thinking institution in the legal landscape.
