Company Profile Legaltech · Austin Y Combinator S19
The Talent Platform for Legal

Flo

Connecting law firms, attorneys, agencies, and law schools on one platform for recruiting and performance management.

FLO, formerly Flo Recruit · Founded 2017 in Austin, Texas by Katherine Allen & Atreya Misra · The colorful chainlinks in the company's mark stand for the connections it builds across the legal talent market.

Flo - The Talent Platform for Legal FLO · JOINFLO.COM
~70%
of AmLaw 100 firms
85%
Top 50 law schools
40k+
Law students & associates
500+
Search firm users

A recruiting company that speaks law firm

Legal hiring runs on rigid calendars, on-campus interviews, agency submissions, and a paper trail most software never learned to read. Flo built for exactly that world - and top firms noticed.

Flo, the Austin company formerly known as Flo Recruit, builds software for the business of legal talent. It connects the four groups that make legal hiring happen - law firms, law schools, attorneys, and the search firms that broker senior moves - and gives each a shared, data-driven place to work. The pitch is narrow on purpose: not general recruiting software with a legal skin, but a platform shaped around how firms actually hire and develop lawyers.

That focus has paid off in adoption. The company reports working with roughly 70% of AmLaw 100 firms and 85% of the top 50 U.S. law schools, with more than 40,000 law students and associates using its free career platform. Named clients include some of the most recognizable names in the profession - Skadden, Sullivan & Cromwell, Morrison & Foerster, Davis Polk, and Milbank among them.

The problems Flo tackles are unglamorous but expensive. Law firms have historically tracked candidates across spreadsheets and email threads, coordinated on-campus interviews by hand, and leaned on recruiting agencies for a large share of lateral hires - a channel that carries meaningful fees. Flo's answer is to give firms their own applicant tracking system, their own pipeline data, and a direct line to students, so more of the process runs in-house.

What makes the company unusual is where it started. The idea did not begin in a law library. It began, by the founders' own account, in the basement of a University of Texas sorority house, where co-founder Katherine Allen was sorting through stacks of pledges' resumes and decided there had to be a better way.

From Greek life to the AmLaw 100

Allen, a mechanical engineering student, sketched the first wireframes in her journal and went looking for a developer. She found Atreya Misra, then a junior, and the two began selling recruiting software - first to Greek-life organizations, then to employers who were being mobbed at college career fairs and struggled to keep track of whom they had met.

By 2019 the product had grown into a platform for tracking, researching, and hiring candidates met at events. Flo completed Y Combinator's Summer 2019 batch, raised early funding, and began landing large law firms as clients. Legal - with its structured recruiting cycles and high cost of a bad hire - turned out to be the market where the product fit best.

We saw there was a much bigger opportunity: employers.
Katherine Allen · Co-Founder & CEO, on the early pivot

The name change from Flo Recruit to simply Flo, and the launch of performance-management tools, signal the company's wider ambition: not just to help firms hire lawyers, but to help them develop and retain them across the talent lifecycle.

What you can actually do with Flo

A connected suite rather than a single tool - each piece serves a different corner of the legal talent market.

ATS · 2023
Applicant Tracking

Run lateral attorney, partner, law student, and business-professional recruiting in one ATS - streamlining applications, agency submissions, interviews, and reporting.

Platform · 2024
Flo Forward

A free legal career platform where 35,000+ law students track firm profiles, summer associate job listings, events, interview schedules, and offers - connected directly to firm talent teams.

Recruiting · 2023
Pipeline Building

Reach top entry-level talent directly, track early engagement, and flag high-potential prospects before competitors do.

Talent · 2025
Performance Management

Drive participation in performance reviews, new-hire check-ins, and project evaluations, with HRIS and matter/billing integrations.

AI · 2026
Flo AI

A conversational layer that lets talent teams ask their recruiting and talent data questions in plain language.

Schools & Agencies
School & Search Firm Tools

On-campus interview management and market insights for career services, plus candidate submission and private-search tools for legal recruiting agencies.

The market, in context

Legal is a vertical big enough - and specific enough - to justify its own software. Flo's reach across the industry's two sides is its moat.

AmLaw 100 firms on Flo~70%
70%
Top 50 U.S. law schools connected85%
85%
Law students & associates reached (of ~50k)~80%
40k+

Figures self-reported by the company across its site and funding announcements; treat as approximate.

Built for legal, not adapted to it

What Flo does

  • Purpose-built ATS for lateral, partner, campus, and clerk hiring
  • Direct, two-sided link between firms and 40k+ students
  • Free Flo Forward career platform fuels the network effect
  • Data and reporting owned by the firm, reducing agency reliance
  • Performance management and Flo AI extend beyond hiring

The alternative

  • General ATS tools (Greenhouse, Lever, iCIMS) not shaped for legal cycles
  • Legacy legal tools such as LawCruit / viDesktop and Symplicity modules
  • Spreadsheets and email threads for OCI and candidate tracking
  • Recruiting agencies brokering a large share of lateral hires - at a fee
  • Disconnected systems between firms, schools, and candidates

Backed to build the ecosystem

Seed · Aug 2023
$4.2M
To modernize legal recruiting & build the ATS
Investors: LiveOak Venture Partners, Moneta Ventures, Tau Ventures, Alumni Ventures
Series A · May 2025
~$5M
To expand the legal recruiting ecosystem
Investors: LiveOak Venture Partners, Moneta Ventures, The LegalTech Fund, Y Combinator, Teamworthy Ventures

Round amounts per public funding announcements and third-party databases; the Series A figure is approximate.

Timeline

The road so far

2017

Flo Recruit is founded

UT students Katherine Allen and Atreya Misra start the company, building event and college recruiting software.

2019

Y Combinator & first law firms

Flo completes YC's Summer 2019 batch, raises early funding, and lands major law firm clients.

2023

$4.2M seed round

LiveOak and Moneta lead a seed round to modernize legal recruiting and expand the ATS.

2024

Flo Forward launches

A connected legal career platform and job board for students and attorneys goes public.

2025

Series A

A Series A led by LiveOak and Moneta expands the ecosystem across firms, schools, and search firms.

2026

Rebrand to Flo & Flo AI

The company drops 'Recruit' and launches Flo AI for natural-language talent data queries.

From the founder

Market shifts have pushed firms to adopt less structured, more diverse recruiting tactics. Flo clients are making strategic decisions based on real-time insight.
Katherine Allen · CEO, on the Series A
We saw there was a much bigger opportunity: employers.
Katherine Allen · on the pivot from Greek-life recruiting

Questions people ask about Flo

What does Flo do?
Flo builds software for the legal talent market, connecting law firms, law schools, attorneys, and search firms with tools for recruiting, applicant tracking, career discovery, and performance management.
Who founded Flo, and when?
Katherine Allen (CEO) and Atreya Misra (CTO) founded the company in 2017 while students at the University of Texas at Austin.
Who uses Flo?
Law firms, law schools, legal search firms, and job-seekers. Flo reports working with roughly 70% of AmLaw 100 firms, 85% of the top 50 U.S. law schools, and 40,000+ law students and associates.
How much funding has Flo raised?
Publicly reported rounds include a $4.2M seed in 2023 and a Series A in 2025, led by LiveOak Venture Partners and Moneta Ventures with participation from investors including Y Combinator and The LegalTech Fund.
Why did Flo Recruit change its name to Flo?
As the platform expanded beyond recruiting into performance management and a broader talent lifecycle, the company simplified its name to Flo to reflect that wider scope.

Links & resources

Profile compiled from public sources including joinflo.com, Y Combinator, BusinessWire, Built In Austin, and Crunchbase. Figures are self-reported or third-party estimates and are approximate.