This article from the Law Soc Gazette might be worth keeping on file….
How legal directories can affect lawyers’ career prospects
http://www.lawgazette.co.uk/in-business/how-legal-directories-can-affect-lawyers039-career-prospects
Thursday 11 November 2010 by Scott Gibson
Despite mixed views on the value of ratings in legal directories, they have a dramatically positive impact on law firm recruitment. Moreover, for individual lawyers a good rating often adds as much as 20% to their market value in law firms, and opens doors at senior level in-house.
Last month, I attended the launch of the International Financial Law Review 1000 (IFLR1000). As I watched lawyers and PR types milling around The Royal Exchange in London, eagerly awaiting sight of their latest rankings, a quote from Othello came to mind: ?Reputation is oft got without merit and lost without deserving.?
Nothing better illustrates this than the slew of legal directories which, like the IFLR1000, rank law firms, departments and individual lawyers. In the UK, by far the most referenced of these are the Legal 500 and Chambers & Partners; however, quotes from the IFLR1000, Martindale Hubble, Practical Law Company and Who?s Who Legal are also regularly used in law firm marketing in the UK and elsewhere.
Playing it cool
It is common for law firm partners to downplay the significance of a ranking in these directories with the observation that ?no in-house counsel has ever instructed a law firm or individual partner on the basis of their ranking in a directory?. Another charge laid against directories is that resource-rich law firms with large marketing teams can outperform others in a triumph of form over substance. Other critics point to the wide variations in assessments of the same practice in different directories as proof that these guides are too subjective and lack rigour.
Having spoken to past editors of such publications, I am less cynical about the ability of law firms overly to influence the ratings processes. Vast amounts of submitted material is simply ignored by the directories for being unsolicited and irrelevant.
Even so, skilful law firm marketing and hyperbole must have an impact, and mistakes and inaccuracies occur. Just about everyone knows a partner listed as a ?leading individual? by one or other publication in, say, ?nuclear? or ?derivatives? who, although delighted with the recognition, will candidly disclose that their inclusion was on the back of a particular matter, and that their real knowledge of the specialist area is peripheral at best.
Most experienced lawyers will also know the odd ?leading individual? who, as their long-suffering assistants constantly attest, has somehow managed to retain the approbation of the directories entirely through their client-winning skills rather than their technical excellence. Worse still, and probably more common, a number of excellent partners, eulogised by many in their firms for their technical skills but perhaps lacking in internal political clout or self-marketing flair, are missed altogether.
