As Katten's recruiting needs evolved, the firm wanted a more connected approach to managing both student and lateral hiring. After first partnering with Flo in 2019 to systematize law student recruiting events, Katten has since expanded Recruitment’s use of the platform to include Flo Forward, Applicant Tracking for both lateral and student hiring, and Work Allocation. The Professional Development team has also recently added on Performance Management. We spoke with Stephanie London, Senior Legal Recruiting Manager, about how bringing recruiting into one platform has helped her team streamline processes, improve collaboration, and create a more consistent experience for candidates and recruiters alike.
Q: Tell us about your role at Katten. How long have you been with the firm, and what areas of the recruiting process do you oversee?
Stephanie: I've been with Katten since May 2014, and over the years I've held a few different positions within legal recruiting and professional development.
In my current role as Senior Legal Recruiting Manager, I oversee our non-partner recruiting, including lateral associate, counsel and staff attorney hiring, law students, and our summer associate program.
I'm based in Chicago, but I work across the entire firm. Our recruiting team is structured geographically, with team members supporting all our different offices, but we really function as one firmwide team. Even though we each have geographic responsibilities, we collaborate closely across offices.
Q: What Flo products do you use, and how long have you been working with Flo?
Stephanie: We first started working with Flo in 2019 with Outreach Events. This eventually expanded in to our use of Flo for virtual interviews.
From there, we added our Flo Forward firm profile, and then in November 2025 we officially moved to Flo Applicant Tracking for all candidate applications. More recently, we've started using Work Allocation as well, and our Professional Development and Human Resources teams are now going to be using Performance Management.
Since implementing the ATS, we've completed our first full cycle of 1L and 2L recruiting, and we've also transitioned all of our lateral attorney recruiting onto the platform.
Q: You use Flo’s ATS for both lateral and student recruiting. Are there any differences in how you use it for lateral? Have you customized it?
Stephanie: Yes, we've customized it for both workflows because they're very different.
For lateral recruiting, we've built out different pipelines and statuses that make sense for our lateral hiring process. We've customized the workflows, so candidates move through the right practice groups and departments and everything stays organized.
For summer recruiting, we have relied heavily on the custom questions we are able to ask candidates, which allows our team to gain more insight during the recruiting process. We also rely on reporting to track how many summer associates we've hired, where each office stands throughout recruiting, and other metrics that help us stay on top of the process.
We're looking forward to expanding how we utilize reporting for both lateral and summer recruiting as we continue using the system.
Q: Has Flo helped streamline your recruiting process?
Stephanie: Absolutely.
One of the biggest improvements has been having everything in one place. Before Flo’s ATS, we were using Flo for law student interviews but managing candidates in a separate ATS. That meant every update had to happen in two different systems.
Now everything is housed in one candidate profile, so we're not duplicating work anymore. That's been a huge time saver for our team.
We've also customized our applications so candidates can identify the practice areas they're interested in. Since we know which practice areas are hiring in each office, we're able to identify stronger matches much earlier in the recruiting process instead of collecting that information manually at a later point. This has streamlined the process.
Q: Has it helped in your dealings with agencies?
Stephanie: We just turned on the agency portal, and I think that's going to make a huge difference.
Before, everything was handled manually, which created a lot of administrative work and left more room for human error. We've never had agencies submit candidates directly through an ATS before.
Having one consistent place where search firms can submit candidates is going to take a lot of that administrative burden off our team and make the process much smoother for everyone. This is such a benefit of having one platform for all our recruiting processes.
Q: Can you speak to any time savings you've experienced since switching to Flo?
Stephanie: The biggest time savings has definitely come from eliminating duplicate work.
Before, we had to maintain multiple systems throughout the recruiting process. Now everything is in Flo, which makes managing candidates much more efficient. It is also helpful to see a candidate’s full life cycle starting from law school outreach and continuing through the interview process and beyond.
The custom application questions have also been really valuable. Being able to collect information about practice area interests upfront helps us better identify candidates who are a strong fit from the beginning.
Q: You also have a Premium Flo Forward firm profile. How has that impacted your summer associate recruiting?
Stephanie: We have noticed that students are finding us through Flo Forward.
The nice part is that it's a seamless experience. Students can learn about the firm and then move directly into the ATS to apply.
It's also become a really helpful resource when law students reach out with questions about the firm because it gives them another way to learn more about who we are. I always want to be helpful to law students and enable them to learn as much about Katten as they can, and Flo Forward makes this so much easier.
Q: What was your team's experience learning and onboarding with Flo, as well as your interactions with Flo’s customer support team?
Stephanie: My team implemented Flo alongside our partner recruiting team, although we customized each account differently based on our recruiting needs.
We rolled everything out in phases. One of my teammates and I started first, and then we brought the rest of the team on. It actually ended up being a pretty quick process.
One of my favorite features has been the Help Chat support, which has been very helpful for our team. Whenever we have a question, someone is there in real time, and that's made a huge difference compared to other systems we've used. It's become our go-to whenever we have a question, and someone is always quick to help.
The support has been excellent.
I've also appreciated that Flo really listens to customer feedback. We've suggested changes or asked for certain features, and it's been great to see those requests reflected in future updates.
Q: Have there been any unexpected benefits or insights from using Flo?
Stephanie: While I expected it would be helpful, it was hard to fully appreciate how valuable it would be to have everything housed in one platform.
Now interviews, work allocation, summer evaluations, self-assessments, and recruiting workflows all live together. Before, everything existed in different systems that didn't communicate with one another.
Having everything connected has made collaboration much easier, not just for our recruiting team, but for the attorneys completing evaluations and participating in the recruiting process as well.
Q: What advice would you give another firm considering Flo for lateral recruiting?
Stephanie: It can be really easy to keep doing what you've always done because implementing a new system feels like a big project.
But looking back, all of the work we put into the transition has absolutely been worth it.
Being able to customize the platform around our own processes while also modernizing the way we recruit has been a great step for our team. Change always comes with challenges and it may seem daunting, but innovation can help elevate your processes. We were comfortable with our old process, but we wanted more capabilities and a fresh perspective, and Flo has given us that.
Q: Is there anything else you'd like to share about how Flo has changed your recruiting process?
Stephanie: For our team, the biggest benefit has simply been bringing everything together.
From interviews and candidate management to work allocation and evaluations, everything is connected. We're a small but mighty recruiting team, so anything that helps us save time, collaborate more easily, and keep our processes running smoothly is a huge win.
By bringing all aspects of recruiting into one platform, Katten has created a more connected recruiting process across the firm. For Stephanie London and her team, the biggest impact isn't just the time saved, but it's having a flexible system that supports collaboration, reduces administrative work, and continues to evolve alongside the firm's recruiting needs.