Just five months after launching its app in the UK, legal recruitment marketplace Route1 has seen over three thousand lawyers and fifty legal employers, including Linklaters, Clifford Chance, Shearman & Sterling, Herbert Smith Freehills and DLA Piper.
The Australian start-up saw the opportunity for international talent attraction noting both domestic and international demand from UK firms hiring talent from Australia, New Zealand and South Africa.
Like Uber and Airbnb, the disruptive darlings of the digital economy, Route1 uses technology to solve market inefficiencies by cutting out the middle man.
In the case of legal recruitment, a transparent marketplace built on supply and demand can put an end to bad recruitment practices like cold-calling and misleading job descriptions.
On Route1, lawyers are matched with relevant jobs based on their location, PQE and specialisation, and remain anonymous until they decide to apply for a job. They then review summaries of their job matches posted directly by employers and, if interested, they can request full job descriptions and apply via email.
Route1’s value proposition is also unconventional. Both employers and job seekers can use the platform for free initially. Employers can sign up and start posting jobs and lawyers can download the app and scroll through vacancies until a match is made. Because of its low cost base and match successes, Route1 has set their fee to employers at just 5 per cent of the first year’s salary for successful hires.
This is just 20 per cent of the cost of average recruitment agency fees in the legal sector. According to Route1 founder and CEO Henry Allan, the technology and value proposition are potentially transferrable to other “white-collar” professional sectors such as accounting and finance.
“We believe that setting our fee rates at this level will help to rebase expectations in the industry and bring an end to high pressure cold-calling by recruiters, serving to put more control back in the hands of employers and candidates,” he said.
