LEAP Legal Software, a global leader in cloud-based legal practice management solutions, has demonstrated remarkable advancements in its talent acquisition strategy, leveraging its long-standing partnership with Workable. The collaboration has yielded significant operational efficiencies, strategic talent sourcing, and enhanced candidate experiences across its rapidly expanding global footprint, fundamentally reshaping how the company identifies and integrates top talent. With a reported saving of approximately 20 hours per week during peak hiring periods and an impressive 100% of US hires sourced through internal referrals over the past year, LEAP exemplifies how strategic HR technology adoption can drive substantial business impact and foster a deliberate, high-quality talent ecosystem.
A Global Innovator in Legal Technology
Founded in Australia over three decades ago, LEAP Legal Software has evolved from a pioneering startup into a global powerhouse, providing essential cloud-based practice management tools for small law firms. Its sophisticated platform streamlines legal operations, enabling firms to manage cases, documents, and finances more efficiently. This commitment to innovation and efficiency is mirrored in its own internal operations, particularly in its approach to human resources and talent acquisition. With a robust presence across Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States, LEAP employs approximately 900 individuals worldwide, necessitating a cohesive and effective global hiring strategy.
The intricate demands of managing talent across diverse regulatory and cultural landscapes fall largely under the purview of leaders like Susanne Poole, who oversees people, recruitment, and culture for LEAP’s US arm. Her responsibilities encompass a broad spectrum of HR functions, including support, sales, client success, and implementation roles. Like many HR professionals in fast-growing technology companies, Poole has often operated as a "team of one," underscoring the critical need for scalable, intuitive, and highly automated recruitment solutions to sustain rapid organizational growth without compromising quality or efficiency. The partnership with Workable, initiated in December 2018, has been instrumental in supporting LEAP’s expansion from a company of 500-600 employees at the time of adoption to its current scale.
Navigating the Challenges of Pre-Workable Hiring
Before integrating Workable, LEAP’s recruitment processes were managed through a module embedded within its existing Human Resources Information System (HRIS). While technically functional, this system presented numerous friction points that hindered efficient talent acquisition. The platform was described as clunky and unintuitive, lacking the automation critical for a lean HR operation. A significant challenge was the absence of automated communication flows to hiring managers. This forced Susanne Poole to manually track down individuals, repeatedly follow up on candidate feedback, and constantly remind stakeholders of where candidates stood in the hiring pipeline. This administrative overhead became an unsustainable drain on resources, particularly for a single HR professional managing a rapidly scaling company.
Furthermore, the previous system’s limitations extended to job board distribution. Its inability to disseminate job postings across the volume and breadth required by a growing technology company proved to be a severe constraint. For an organization operating across multiple international markets, this limitation was particularly acute, impeding LEAP’s ability to reach diverse talent pools effectively. Poole articulated this challenge, stating, "I needed our recruitment to be much more efficient, and I needed it to be able to talk to the recruiting managers around the business instantly. We struggled with our previous system in doing that." These operational bottlenecks underscored the urgent need for a more agile, integrated, and technologically advanced Applicant Tracking System (ATS).
The Strategic Imperative for Workable
In 2018, as LEAP entered a phase of aggressive scaling, the search for an alternative hiring platform became a strategic priority. The selection criteria were multifaceted, balancing cost-effectiveness with advanced technological capabilities. As a startup rapidly expanding its global presence, budgetary considerations were paramount, which naturally excluded some of the larger, more expensive enterprise platforms. However, the decision was not solely economic; it was also deeply rooted in LEAP’s identity as a technology company. The chosen platform needed to reflect innovation, intelligence, and genuine intuitiveness, ensuring widespread adoption without requiring extensive change management efforts across hiring managers in six different countries.
Workable emerged as a clear frontrunner from the initial demonstration. Poole noted that Workable "felt like it had its finger on the pulse. It spoke to what we needed, and it was just smart. And Workable has always really delivered on that." Key functionalities that distinguished Workable included its robust people search capabilities and multi-board job distribution. These features were particularly vital for LEAP, given its imperative to recruit across disparate geographies with distinct talent markets. The ability to centralize and manage both UK and US hiring from a single, unified platform, rather than maintaining parallel, siloed systems, represented a significant operational advantage and a crucial factor in LEAP’s decision.
Seamless Implementation and Widespread Adoption
The rollout of Workable across LEAP’s global operations was, by all accounts, remarkably straightforward. Susanne Poole initiated the implementation by distributing comprehensive learning videos to hiring managers and conducting a limited number of targeted workshops to bring teams online. This streamlined process resulted in no significant disruption, a testament to Workable’s intuitive design. For a company that housed between 500 and 600 employees at the time, achieving such a frictionless rollout is often a considerable challenge. The inherent user-friendliness of the Workable platform was a decisive factor in its rapid and widespread adoption.
Poole recounted the ease of transition: "People weren’t confused by what we were trying to get out of it. They embraced it quickly. I don’t recall this giving us any hiccups." This swift adoption was not coincidental; it was a direct consequence of a platform engineered for usability by individuals who are not professional recruiters. Workable was designed to cater to hiring managers who often juggle multiple responsibilities and possess minimal patience for complex or cumbersome software interfaces. By meeting users where they were, Workable successfully integrated into LEAP’s operational fabric, ensuring immediate and sustained engagement across the organization.
Quantifiable Impact: Reclaiming Time and Resources
The most immediate and profound operational benefit realized from the adoption of Workable was the significant reclamation of time. During LEAP’s period of rapid scaling, the previous system’s inefficiencies forced Susanne Poole to dedicate an inordinate amount of time to manual chasing, reminding, and coordinating feedback. This administrative burden consumed a substantial portion of her work week. With Workable automating critical functions such as communications, pipeline reminders, and candidate status updates, this overhead largely vanished.
Poole estimated the time savings during the initial period of rapid growth: "Easily about 20 hours a week back in 2018. There was so much chasing because we didn’t have a system that spoke to everyone and kept everyone honest." This substantial time saving translated directly into enhanced productivity and strategic focus. The hours reclaimed were redirected towards higher-value activities, including refining candidate quality assessments, engaging in more strategic hiring conversations, and proactively building a robust talent pipeline. This strategic reallocation of resources has been instrumental in reducing LEAP’s reliance on external recruiters across a majority of its role categories, leading to considerable cost efficiencies.
A Referral Strategy Redefined: 100% Success
One of the most compelling outcomes of LEAP’s partnership with Workable is the transformation of its internal referral program. Over the past 12 months, an astonishing 100% of LEAP’s US hires have been sourced through internal referrals. This remarkable figure is not a mere coincidence but the direct result of a meticulously crafted talent strategy, built upon the strengths of the organization’s existing workforce and seamlessly supported by Workable’s dedicated referral functionality. This approach stands in stark contrast to the traditional method of broadly disseminating job postings and sifting through thousands of applications for operational and support roles.
Susanne Poole has championed a deliberate, network-centric approach: trusting the existing employee base, leveraging Workable to efficiently manage the referral pipeline, and prioritizing candidates recommended by individuals who already embody and understand LEAP’s culture and values. "To the point where I don’t even post the role on the job boards at the moment. We took a very deliberate approach to do the referral piece," Poole explained. This strategy not only ensures a higher quality of candidates but also significantly reduces the time and resources typically expended on traditional recruitment channels. For critical operational and support roles, Workable has consistently delivered qualified candidates, effectively eliminating the need for external recruiter spend. This consistent cost efficiency compounds over time, particularly for a company experiencing steady growth across multiple international markets.
Enhancing Candidate Experience and Brand Reputation
The adoption of Workable has profoundly improved the candidate experience throughout LEAP’s hiring process. Automated messaging ensures that no applicant falls through the cracks, regardless of the outcome of their application. Every candidate receives timely, professional communication at each stage of the process, a crucial element in maintaining a positive brand image in a competitive hiring landscape. This reliability is paramount; in today’s talent market, the candidate experience is inextricably linked to a company’s brand reputation, a fact LEAP takes very seriously.
The self-scheduling feature within Workable has become one of Susanne Poole’s favorite tools, precisely for its impact on candidate experience and operational efficiency. Instead of the cumbersome manual coordination of calendars across multiple stakeholders, candidates are empowered to select interview times that align with their own schedules. This eliminates the often frustrating back-and-forth communication, accelerates the hiring process, and conveys a profound respect for the candidate’s time. "Self-scheduling is brilliant. It connects your calendar, you push it out to candidates, they pick a time that suits them. It stops so much unnecessary back and forth. It is a huge time saver and it always works," Poole affirmed, highlighting its consistent reliability.
Fostering Structural Fairness Through Anonymized Candidates
One of the Workable features Susanne Poole champions with particular enthusiasm is candidate anonymization. In an organization that views diversity as a tangible competitive advantage, the ability to strip identifying information from candidate profiles before they reach hiring managers is more than a compliance measure; it is a strategic imperative. Unconscious bias is an inherent human tendency, and hiring managers, despite their best intentions, can unconsciously gravitate towards candidates who share similar backgrounds or demographics.
Anonymization actively disrupts this pattern, compelling decision-makers to evaluate candidates based solely on their skills, qualifications, and potential contributions, rather than superficial demographic identifiers. "It takes out that unconscious bias thing that we all have, much as we don’t want to have it. Our diversity is definitely our superpower. By anonymizing candidates, you’re just finding the people that have what you need. It is so smart and it was so easy to set up," Poole articulated. This commitment to structural fairness not only aligns with LEAP’s values but also serves as a critical mechanism for building a diverse and inclusive workforce, which has been proven to drive innovation and enhance organizational performance.
Eight Years of Continuous Innovation and Partnership
Beyond the individual features, what Susanne Poole values most deeply is Workable’s unwavering commitment to continuous evolution. The platform LEAP adopted in 2018 and the platform it utilizes today are, in her words, "meaningfully different, in all the right ways." This ongoing innovation ensures that Workable remains at the forefront of HR technology, adapting to the ever-changing demands of the global talent market.
"The innovation that has come out of Workable, I can’t keep up with it. The Workable we had in 2018 is completely different to the Workable we have now, and that is how it should be," Poole observed. For a technology company like LEAP, selecting a hiring platform that consistently innovates is not merely a preference; it is a fundamental requirement for maintaining a competitive edge. After eight years, the strategic partnership between LEAP Legal Software and Workable continues to thrive, demonstrating the enduring value of investing in dynamic, forward-thinking HR solutions that evolve alongside the needs of a growing global enterprise. This enduring collaboration underscores the critical role that advanced ATS platforms play in enabling companies to scale efficiently, attract top talent, and cultivate a truly inclusive and high-performing workforce.
