Struggling to Find Skilled Document Production Specialists? Here’s How to Hire the Right Talent

To create documents with utmost speed and precision is a fundamental necessity. Whether it involves collating bundle charges, inputting the formatting for lengthy contracts, or producing presentations that shall be client-ready, the legal document production specialists play a major role behind the scenes in ensuring law firms stay efficient, compliant, and client-serving.

While this is the case, many firms across the UK find it harder to hire the right people for those roles. If your organisation experiences high turnover, slow hiring, and low performance from current departmental hires, your document production recruitment strategy may need reconsideration.

Here’s a way to simplify your recruitment process, attract the right talents, and build a strong, productive, and reliable document production team.

Why Legal Document Specialists Are in High Demand (and Short Supply)

A rapidly growing demand exists for document production skills across law firms, in-house legal departments, and LPO providers. However, there are key reasons that hinder hiring within the firms:

Niche skill set: Candidates must possess advanced IT skills combined with expertise in legal formatting, house styles, and strict confidentiality.

Speed & perfection are required: Clients are unforgiving, and tremendous pressure about deadlines hangs in the air. The shorter the turnaround time, the more welcome it is.

Unsociable hours: Many document production jobs require evening, overnight, or weekend shifts, which further narrows the candidate pool.

Limited visibility: Document production is not a high-profile career option, and a good number of capable professionals either don’t know it exists or are unaware of where to apply for it.

If your current approach to hiring legal support staff is not yielding the desired results, you may want to consider adopting a structured and specialist-led approach.

The Core Skills Every Legal Document Specialist Should Have

Whether you’re hiring for in-house support or building a 24/7 document production centre, here’s what to look for:

1. Advanced Technical Skills

• Microsoft Word (styles, TOCs, templates, tracked changes, macros)
• PowerPoint and Excel (formatting, graphs, formulas)
• PDF editing tools like Adobe Acrobat
• Document management systems (e.g., iManage, NetDocuments)
• Typing speed of 65–80+ WPM with 98%+ accuracy

2. Legal Formatting Expertise

• Familiarity with bundles, contracts, court pleadings, and chronologies
• Ability to follow firm-specific templates and styles
• Experience in a legal or professional services environment

3. Soft Skills That Matter

• Discretion and confidentiality
• Working independently under pressure
• Willingness to work shifts or out-of-hours
• Eye for detail and pride in presentation

How to Build an Effective Document Production Recruitment Process in the UK

Step 1: Write Role-Specific Job Descriptions

• Avoid generic admin job specs. Instead, include:
• Types of documents they’ll be producing
• Software and tools, they must be proficient in
• Shift expectations (day, evening, overnight, weekend)
• Team structure (centralised team or embedded in departments)
• Training or onboarding support provided
• The more detailed and transparent the description, the more likely you are to attract qualified candidates who understand what’s required.

Step 2: Choose the Right Channels to Source Candidates

You’ll save time, money, and stress by going straight to the right places to find document production specialists:

• Specialist legal recruitment agencies: These recruiters already have vetted, tested candidates who are ready to go.
• Legal job boards: Postings on general sites often yield irrelevant applications. Use legal-focused platforms to target candidates with sector experience.
• Internal referrals: Tap into your legal-secretary or support team networks- these people often know former colleagues searching for flexible work.
• LinkedIn groups and forums: Some legal support personnel crowd into niche LinkedIn groups-these are a good source of passive candidates.

Step 3: Skills Testing as an Introduction

This is where most firms fail.

Instead of just relying on CVs and interview charisma, conduct skills tests that simulate on-the-job experiences:

• Document formatting test
• Typing speed and accuracy test
• Scenario-based tests (e.g., “You receive a bundle request at 8pm for a 9am court deadline-what do you do?”)
• This kind of testing keeps the underqualified away and gives you increased confidence about your final hiring decision.

Step 4: A Smooth Candidate Experience Must Be Provided

Able document specialists tend to juggle multiple offers or contract opportunities. A clunky or slow hiring process will lose you!

To stay in the competition:

• Streamlining the application and interview stages
• Clear communication of timelines
• Quick feedback and next steps
• Emphasise a company culture, tech stack, flexible shifts, and career path options.
• Making a superb first impression earns you a coveted position as an employer.

Should You Consider Remote or Hybrid Document Production Jobs?

Definitely, such legal firms are adding more capacity through remote or hybrid document production teams, especially for evening and weekend shifts.

Allowing remote or hybrid roles enables you to:

• Tap into talent pools outside of London or other high-cost cities
• Easy fill for complex shift patterns
• Cut costs on office space
• Appeal to professionals who want a work-life balance

Then again, you need to adhere to security and confidentiality protocols, but given that your technology infrastructure is set, the remote team functions just fine with the on-site team.

Why a Legal Recruitment Specialist?

If all that seems like a lot of work, it is – unless you engage the services of a specialist.

A legal recruiter specialising in staffing document production roles will:

• Present you only with candidates that are pre-screened and tested for skills
• Understand shift and urgency requirements
• Assist you in satisfying requirements for both short-term contracts and long-term roles.
• Save internal teams’ time slogging through irrelevant CVs

With this, you will hire legal document specialists more quickly, reliably, and with lower risk.

The demand for document production experts will never go away; it is increasing. For whatever reason, your firm might be growing, or it may be dealing with an increased case load, or simply replacing key team members. Hiring the right person the first time has to be essential.

Having a clear job brief, skills-based screening, and specialist recruiter assistance can turn your document production recruitment strategy in the UK from a bottleneck into a competitive advantage. Time to get all systems go for your legal support staff hiring process – and Owen Reed can help with that.