Hall Render is the nation’s largest healthcare-focused law firm, supporting clients across the healthcare industry with legal counsel and strategic guidance. As the firm continued to grow by almost 20% in the last five years, Director of Recruiting Laura Dettinger needed a more efficient way to manage recruiting across student hiring, lateral hiring, shareholder hiring, and administrative recruiting.
After years of managing recruiting through email and spreadsheets, Hall Render implemented Flo’s Applicant Tracking System (ATS) to create a more centralized, intuitive recruiting process.
We spoke with Laura about why Hall Render chose Flo, how the platform has transformed their recruiting workflows, and the impact Candidate Review has had on attorney engagement and hiring efficiency.
Q: Can you tell us about your role at Hall Render? How long have you been with the firm and what areas of recruiting do you handle?
Laura: I’m the Director of Recruiting at Hall Render, and I’ll be coming up on four years with the firm this fall. I was the firm’s first dedicated recruiting hire, so a big part of my role has been building out and formalizing our recruiting processes.
I oversee attorney recruiting across the board, from summer associates to lateral shareholders, and I also oversee some administrative recruiting with support from our recruiting coordinator and the HR team.
Before joining Hall Render, I spent six years in law school career services, so I came into the role with a strong understanding of legal recruiting but knew we needed the right systems in place to scale effectively.
Q: What led Hall Render to look for a new ATS? What was most important when exploring a change?
Laura: When I joined Hall Render, we didn’t have an ATS at all. Everything was managed through email and spreadsheets. One of the first things I did was start evaluating recruiting platforms.
For me, the biggest priorities were having a short learning curve and being able to get the system up and running quickly. I didn’t want something overly complicated or clunky.
What immediately stood out about Flo was how intuitive it felt, especially the law school recruiting component. We recruit health law focused students nation-wide, so having a platform built specifically with law school recruiting in mind was valuable for us.
I also love data and reporting, so having a system that made information easy to organize and pull was important.
Q: What were some aspects of Flo’s ATS that most interested you and felt like the best fit for Hall Render?
Laura: The platform felt intuitive from the beginning, and that was huge for us.
I’ve also had a really great experience with Flo’s customer support team. Anytime I’ve had suggestions or questions about how to optimize a workflow, the team has been incredibly responsive. Sometimes I’ll explain how I’m trying to use something, and the response is, “That’s a great idea.” Then updates happen quickly.
It really feels like Flo listens to customers and evolves based on how firms are using the platform.
That responsiveness has continued as our team has grown. Even when we brought on a new coordinator, it was easy for them to get answers and learn the system quickly.
Q: How has Candidate Review changed your recruiting process?
Laura: Candidate Review has probably been one of the biggest time savers for us.
I trained our attorneys on how to use Candidate Review so they can check candidate statuses and pipeline updates on demand without having to wait on a response from me.
We first rolled it out during Summer Associate recruiting with our largest office and then expanded it to other offices, and then lateral recruiting.
For summer associate recruiting, we created a very straightforward process where attorneys receive a link, review candidates, and vote yes, no, or undecided. We built intuitive status buckets so attorneys can quickly understand where candidates stand and how we are moving them along in the process.
Once callback interviews begin, attorneys can easily reference all prior feedback directly within the candidate profile.
The biggest impact is that it’s dramatically reduced follow-up emails and sped up decision-making. I would say it easily saves me at least 100 emails during recruiting season.
Our attorneys have really embraced it. We’ve had no complaints, and our summer associate lead partner especially appreciates how quickly decisions can now be made.
Q: Has unifying your recruiting efforts in one platform helped your team?
Laura: Absolutely. We’re a relatively small recruiting and HR team, so having everyone working in the same system has been incredibly helpful. Because our HR and administrative teams already know how to use Flo, they can jump in and help support when needed.
For example, during part of our 2025 summer recruiting cycle, we were between recruiting coordinators. Because our administrative team was already trained in Flo, they were able to step in seamlessly and help support the process.
There’s also a lot of consistency between our summer associate recruiting and lateral hiring workflows, which makes training and collaboration much easier.
Q: What was the historical data transfer experience like?
Laura: We didn’t have a traditional ATS before Flo, so there wasn’t a huge amount of historical data to migrate since most of our information lived in emails.
One feature I’ve really appreciated is the Admin Notes functionality.
Because we’re healthcare-focused, we sometimes encounter candidates’ multiple times throughout their careers. Being able to keep internal notes and context directly within the system has been really valuable for our team.
We’ve found ways to adapt the system to fit our recruiting style and workflows.
Q: What would you tell other firms considering a switch to Flo’s ATS?
Laura: I always talk about the time savings and Candidate Review.
I love showing other firms how we’ve trained attorneys to use the system themselves and how much more efficient that’s made our process.
The customer service is also exceptional. I really appreciate that whenever I share feedback or explain how we’re using the platform, the Flo team genuinely listens. Even though we’re not the largest firm, our needs feel important and prioritized.
That level of partnership has made a huge difference for us.
For Hall Render, implementing Flo’s ATS created a more streamlined and collaborative recruiting process across the firm. By reducing administrative follow-up and empowering attorneys with self-service candidate review, the platform has enabled the recruiting team to move faster, stay organized, and scale efficiently, while maintaining a user-friendly experience for both recruiters and attorneys.
The results reflect broader adoption trends among Flo clients. Approximately 80% of Flo’s ATS customers use the platform to support lateral attorney recruiting, while nearly half also leverage it to recruit business professionals. For firms like Hall Render, this flexibility allows recruiting teams to manage multiple talent pipelines within a single, centralized system, improving visibility, consistency, and collaboration throughout the hiring process.