Insource’s Jenn Little on leveraging AI for smarter searches

[00:00:07] Kylie Speer: Hello and welcome to NZ Lawyer TV. I'm Kylie Speer and my guest today is Jenn Little, Founder and Managing Director at Insource. Insource has been named as one of the winners of the NZ Lawyer Service Provider Awards for 2025. Welcome to you, Jenn. Huge congratulations and thank you so much for joining us today. 

[00:00:30] Jenn Little: Thanks Kylie for having me, we're really excited to be here. 

[00:00:34] Kylie Speer: Well firstly Jenn, what are the legacy stumbling blocks that exist in legal recruitment which your tech product Insource has been able to bypass? 

[00:00:44] Jenn Little: Insource bypasses the long hiring cycles and overblowing recruitment costs. I think put simply we enable our customers to hire lawyers faster. So Insource flips the traditional outsourced recruitment model and allows firms to bring their recruitment function in-house and to source the best talent directly in a far more efficient and cost-effective way. So the in-source legal recruitment technology platform provides visibility of the complete talent pool of lawyers to include passive candidates who aren't actively looking but may move for the right opportunity. And our customers can build talent pools of culturally aligned candidates ahead of the need to hire and really quickly fill future roles from those pools when there's a vacancy. Essentially, our customers have live talent pools of warm interest whose timeframes for a move are known to them. And in the current market, recruitment is always on. I think commencing a recruitment process only when there's a job to fill is often too late due to the shortage of available lawyers on the market. Historically, firms have lacked the tools and visibility of the complete talent pool. So they've relied heavily on expensive third party recruiters, and equally expensive job ads to identify lawyers for their hiring needs, which guarantees those long hiring cycles. So given the talent shortages and the small pool of available lawyers on the market, when firms outsource their recruitment to third-party recruiters, they lose the visibility and control of the recruitment process, and they're forced to hire from the small pool rather than being able to assess the true depths of the more comprehensive talent pool. So, Insource really enables firms to source the best lawyers faster. HR teams using Insource can actually turn around a tightly targeted long list of prospects for their hiring partners to review in about half an hour to include connections that are already known to them or to their existing workforce. And in-source gives HR and firms' internal talent teams their time back. So instead of losing weeks, fielding calls and emails from recruiters, often about unsuitable candidates and, you know, drafting job ads, which would take at least half an hour to draft, get approval and upload the advertisement, even if you're using AI. So responses to job ads currently are really low and often include, incur a large number of responses from candidates that just aren't a great fit. So these traditional methods are quite inefficient and cannot produce results immediately. So by bringing the recruitment process in-house, firms really regain control, they speed up their hiring, and they eliminate those expensive placement fees. 

[00:03:35] Kylie Speer: InSource has made a name by solving recruitment issues such as those you have just mentioned. One firm even reported saving $25,000 per lawyer hired. Can you share with us how you enable that level of saving? 

[00:03:53] Jenn Little: Yes, Kylie. So by bringing the recruitment function in-house, firms can reach out to the talent on Insource directly instead of incurring placement fees or advertising costs. So Insource maps firms' alumni and connections to its workforce that previously worked together, making it super easy for firms to connect with warm talent that is already known to the firm or to its workforce. And most firms tell us that insource pays for itself after one hire. So every hire thereafter effectively saves them a placement fee. So, for example, a recruitment agency fee of $25,000 is 25% of a $100,000 starting salary. Our subscription model is designed for cost efficiency. Pricing is based on lawyer headcount and ranges from $595 plus GST per month. It's for firms with less than, say, 20 lawyers, through to $3,000 a month plus GST for firms that have more than 500 lawyers. So for firms with fewer than 20 lawyers, that's $7,140 plus GST annually, which is obviously a significant saving compared with a single placement fee. And at the top end, it's equivalent to a single placement fee for one senior hire. And while Insource is not available to recruitment agencies, Insource does offer an independent freelance recruitment partner service. And I have handpicked a team of experienced recruiters that can be engaged through the platform to work with our customers on an hourly rate basis. So customers only pay for the hours they engage the freelancer for, and there are no placement fees. So this service is really bridging the gap for those small to mid-sized firms that may not have an internal talent team or person to reach out to the talent, or where the firm doesn't wish to reach out directly. So this service can also support firms with an internal recruitment team when they're short-staffed or when they're going through those busy periods when there are lateral roles to recruit. And the savings are significant, you know, when compared to paying external recruitment placement fees. So a top-tier firm that recently made a couple of hires using Insource told us that Insource has more than proven its value for at least the next three years based off the savings in recruitment fees that they've achieved. So that's the kind of impact that we aim for. 

[00:06:24] Kylie Speer: A key part of your service is not just reacting to open roles, but building talent pools for firms to tap into. How does that work? 

[00:06:31] Jenn Little: Yes, so InSource enables customers to build live talent pools so that they can fill their future roles faster directly from those talent pools. Our customers are adopting a proactive, always-on recruitment strategy, identifying and prospecting talent on InSource before a vacancy arises, and learning the talent's interest in a future opportunity. So knowing who is likely to move and when makes future hiring faster. And firms are proactively leveraging known connections mapped to their workforce. They're tracking their alumni and they're engaging with new talent early really to understand their interest in their timeframes for a future move. Lawyers are proactively passing names of lawyers to HR that have impressed them, perhaps on the other side of deals, or that they have met at law events so that HR can continue to build this information into Insource. Top-tier firms have used Insource to identify talent offshore, and some firms have actually sent partners over to London to meet with Australian and New Zealand alumni on the ground, which has resulted in warm pools of lawyers whose timeframes for returning to New Zealand and Australia is now known to them. Some of our earliest adopters of Insource are reporting that they're now filling roles directly from their Insource talent pools, and many are receiving calls regularly from lawyers they have been building relationships with on Insource about future opportunities. So many firms have utilized the alumni programs to attract leading talent and save money, but that only provides a limited visibility of the market and is heavily reliant on the firms' current methods of tracking people, whereas firms can think of Insource as an alumni program on steroids. 

[00:08:25] Kylie Speer: Jenn, you're active in the Australian and New Zealand markets. How does your role and influence differ across both countries? 

[00:08:33] Jenn Little: Yes, so in New Zealand, my influence was immediate because I was well known after years of headhunting lawyers. So top tier national firms in New Zealand adopted Insource really quickly. In Australia, the market is much larger and my network was initially smaller. So I've really actively focused on building connections across all states there. The response has been incredible. Firms see Insource as a game changer because it's built by law firms for law firms. We're extending our reach through networking, sponsorships and speaking engagements at major legal sector events like ALPMA, the Legal Innovation and Tech Fest and the Law BizCon. And in 2026, I'll be speaking regularly on the Law and Beyond show to share insights on legal talent trends. Collaboration within the legal tech ecosystem has also been key. Vendors and service providers actively refer each other's products and collaborate together and are actively supporting each other within the community. I think a highlight this year was joining the WALTA committee which stands for Women of Australasian Legal Technology which is an entity of ALTA, Australasian Legal Technology Association. And I'm just really passionate about supporting women founders and professionals in legal tech. 

[00:10:00] Kylie Speer: InSource makes use of AI. How does the tech fit into your platform and are you continually refining its power by leveraging more data for the AI to learn from? 

[00:10:15] Jenn Little: Yes, so AI is at the heart of Insource's platform. Our core strength lies in transforming unstructured publicly available data into a highly structured searchable database so firms can instantly find the lawyers they need. Customers can leverage this through AI-assisted search or by applying precise filters. AI doesn't just make searching faster, it adds intelligence. So for example, it can determine primary practice areas that aren't explicitly stated anywhere else, giving firms insights they can't get from traditional sources. So on the front end of our tech, firms can paste a job ad or a description, and the AI will instantly match candidates by evaluating key criteria like PQE, practice area and location, and then rank the lawyers by strength of connection to the firm. So this ensures unbiased, data-driven recruitment. Our AI models are continually evolving. We feed them more data every day. And as foundational models like OpenAI and Gemini advance, the quality and precision of our platform improve. The result is smarter matching, deeper insights and a recruitment process that's faster, fairer and future ready. 

[00:11:35] Kylie Speer: As an ambitious company, what is the next hurdle that you think Insource can conquer and in turn bring significant benefit to legal recruitment? 

[00:11:45] Jenn Little: Our next big hurdle and opportunity is transforming how law firms use data to make strategic talent decisions. We're actually just days away from launching our insights reporting product to a beta group of customers, giving firms unprecedented visibility into talent movement, growth, churn, tenure, and experience distribution within their own firms, as well as benchmarking against competitors and the wider legal market. So this isn't just reporting, it's intelligence. It's spotting flight risks to identify succession gaps. Insource will also empower firms to make more informed data-driven decisions about their recruitment, retention, succession and growth. The feedback that we will receive from our customers in this beta stage is vital to ensuring this new product is right for the legal industry. The reason Insource is such a success is that we seek, listen and then action our customer feedback. And as I always say, Insource is being built by law firms for law firms. So with this level of insight, firms will no longer have to operate in the dark. They can anticipate changes, seize opportunities and build strategies that keep them competitive in a rapidly evolving legal market. 

[00:13:05] Kylie Speer: And finally, Jenn, you are Insource's founder and envisaged a business that could fix a problem in the market. How proud and satisfied are you now to see the vision working and being so successful? with Australasian Lawyer and NZ Lawyer recognising your company as one of the service providers for 2025. 

[00:13:27] Jenn Little: I'm extremely proud, Kylie. We launched InSource just days before COVID, and in four years we've grown InSource across two countries. We've seen uptake from over 90 leading law firms, to include large global law firms with a presence in Australia and New Zealand, top-tier firms, mid-sized firms and even specialist boutiques. Today we're used in every state in Australia, which is just incredible. And in the last year alone, we've saved firms over $2 million in their recruitment costs. So I think, you know, our team is really dedicated to helping our customers hire the right lawyers faster. And that's what drives us every day. That is our mission. And if our customers succeed, then we do too. So we're extremely grateful to the selection panel at Australasian Lawyer for recognising Insource as an award-winning recruitment services provider for the second year in a row. And I want to extend our congratulations to all those that were recognised this year. We know firsthand the effort required to achieve this recognition. And we're really delighted to have been recognised as an organisation that is disrupting the legal recruitment industry by enabling our customers to hire lawyers faster. 

[00:14:45] Kylie Speer: Amazing. Well, thank you so much for your time today, Jenn. And congratulations once again on this clearly well-deserved accolade. 

[00:14:52] Jenn Little: Thank you so much, Kylie. 

[00:14:53] Kylie Speer: And thank you, of course, to our viewers for watching the latest episode of NZ Lawyer TV. We look forward to seeing you again soon.