Put your referral terms in writing for recruitment and HR work

This service centres on the agreement itself. We draft a referral contract for your HR or recruitment consultancy based on your referral model, including points such as when a fee is earned, whether repeat placements are covered, how long referral protection lasts, and who owns the client or candidate relationship after an introduction. The fixed-fee covers the drafting work and the inclusions listed on this page. It does not cover ongoing HR management, representation in disputes, technical implementation or tax advice connected with the arrangement.

Referral arrangements in this sector can become messy quickly if the document does not deal with real-world scenarios. Common pressure points include disputed fee entitlement, overlapping introductions, direct approaches to candidates, and disagreement about whether a placement came from the referral partner's efforts. A written agreement helps record the commercial deal before those issues arise. It can also address confidentiality and privacy handling where candidate or employee information is shared, although the service helps you assess and reduce risk rather than promising compliance in every situation.

Most agreements in this area cover the referral process, what counts as a successful introduction, when referral fees are payable, invoicing and payment timing, exclusivity or non-circumvention terms if relevant, confidentiality, privacy-related obligations, liability allocation, and termination. Depending on your model, the document may also deal with candidate ownership, client ownership, replacement periods, restrictions on direct dealing, and what happens if the same lead is introduced by more than one source. The right approach depends on the working arrangement, documents and factual context.

The drafting usually turns on how your consultancy operates in practice. For example, there is a difference between referring business leads to another consultancy, introducing candidates to a recruiter, or passing client work between HR advisers with different service lines. We will usually need to know who makes the introduction, what information is shared, whether fees are one-off or recurring, how success is measured, and whether there are existing client terms in the background. Those practical details often matter just as much as the wording of the referral clause itself.

Off-the-shelf wording can help you see the usual structure, but it may not deal with the facts that make your arrangement different. However, it often stays too generic for recruitment and HR arrangements. It may not deal properly with candidate ownership, repeat placements, replacement periods, privacy handling, or situations where the parties both have contact with the same client. Templates also tend to assume a simple referral chain when the real arrangement is more layered. A tailored agreement is useful where your fee model, information flows or relationship boundaries are commercially important, especially if sensitive candidate or employee information may be shared between businesses.

Just submit an enquiry via this page or click the 'get started' button on our website to submit an enquiry. After you've submitted an enquiry, one of our legal consultants will review your enquiry within 1 business day and get in touch to get a better idea of exactly what you are looking for.

Then your legal consultant will send through an email with a bit more information about the services you need, along with a fixed fee quote setting out costs, scope of the service and timing. Have a read through it, and if you're happy with the scope, you can accept and sign our engagement letter online - easy!

Once you've formally accepted, we'll connect you with a specialist lawyer and they will work with you to complete your project. They will contact you by email or phone if they need to get in touch.

Sprintlaw works on fixed-fee pricing wherever possible, so you can review the scope and cost before you decide whether to proceed. For the Recruitment And HR Referral Agreement service, pricing starts from $900.00.

After you enquire, a legal consultant will confirm what is included, the expected timing and whether any extra work is needed before you engage us.

We operate completely online, which means we can help you wherever you are in New Zealand. We have office spaces in Sydney, and in Melbourne, but our use of technology allows our team members to work remotely from around the world. Our legal team are mostly based in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth. We also have a London office for Sprintlaw UK.

Our legal team is made up of experienced lawyers, who are specialists in various areas of law and hold an Australian legal practising certificate. None of our Sprintlaw lawyers are New Zealand qualified lawyers and they do not currently hold a New Zealand practising certificate.

They provide legal services working remotely from Australia via our 'legal consultancy' model, through which (under section 6 and section 35 of the New Zealand Lawyers and Conveyancers Act 2006) our Australian legal team are permitted to provide legal services to New Zealand businesses provided they do not provide services in certain 'reserved' areas of law. You can read our FAQ page to learn a bit more about our 'legal consultancy' model.

Given the strong similarities between Australian and New Zealand law, and the areas of law in which we practice (being small business and startup law), we do not view the fact that our lawyers have not qualified in New Zealand as having any substantive impact on the quality of our service. We are committed to ensuring that we provide high quality, affordable legal services to all our New Zealand clients.

Our legal team have all trained at leading firms, but have left the traditional corporate law world to join us on our mission to create a new and better way of delivering legal services. They have specialist expertise in technology law, intellectual property law, contract drafting and review, corporate law and commercial law.