Now Martindale Hubbell say they aren’t getting rid of their lawyer ratings service..
In typical Lexis Nexis style thay are very unclear about the loss of jobs and we’d suggest that the following statement is more than unclear, rather totally obtuse..
They write:
After careful consideration and a long period of deliberation, this change also included a change in the role and responsibilities of the ratings specialists. While this was a truly difficult decision, it is one that we felt necessary to best meet client needs.
More LN doublespeak that doesn’t mean anything .. here are our possible translations for the above sentence
- We have sacked all the relevant staff and aren’t sure who we’ll pass the responsibilities to now
- We will outsource this ratings stuff to India and see what happens
- Hopefully we can just use Chambers ratings and pretend that they are ours
- We’ll hire back a few of the ratings team as freelancers and pay them less and make them work from home
- This ratings stuff is harder and more expensive than we thought .. but if we just hire lots of sales people it’l all workk out fine
- If we send out this release now nobody will read it except for that idiot at House of Butter
Here’s the full press release via their blog…..
Big Plans for Martindale-Hubbell Ratings
Posted by: Carlton Dyce; VP Peer Review Rating
Date: Dec 23, 2008
Topic: Ratings
In the words of Mark Twain, the reports of our death have been greatly exaggerated. Despite suggestions floated in various e-mails and blogs, Peer Review Ratings are not dead and they are not going away.
First and foremost, it is important to know that LexisNexis Martindale-Hubbell is fully committed to providing the industry’s most complete, objective and reliable ratings – including the valuable AV Peer Review Rating – and will continue to do so.
Over the past year, Martindale-Hubbell has begun a broad and ongoing transformation of its offerings in response to our clients’ demands for more diverse, more interactive and more complete information and capabilities. Examples include the Martindale-Hubbell Connected online network for lawyers, LinkedIn integration, online video, patent activity data and more.
Further elements of our transformation include changes to our Martindale-Hubbell ratings, which began with the launch of Client Reviews in September, the addition of Chambers rankings announced this fall, and enhanced Peer Review Ratings coming in 2009. The end result will be increased transparency by practice area, narrative feedback and validated data from third parties that provides examples of an attorney’s experience.
We are very excited about this new, robust ratings offering because it will provide a 360-degree evaluation of an attorney — information only Martindale-Hubbell is uniquely equipped to provide. With these changes to ratings, Martindale-Hubbell has also moved to a team support structure for more effective and efficient ratings services to clients. This will result in an overall increase in the support and resources we have committed to our ratings offering.
To provide even more focus, we will name a new VP/ Product Champion of Ratings who will help us spread the message about our transformation. We are also increasing the current number of Martindale-Hubbell Specialists in the market in order to educate our firms about all the new offerings, including enhanced ratings services. We are adding a product marketing team for a more consistent flow of information and wider communication and we have expanded the current responsibilities of our inside Ratings Support team.
After careful consideration and a long period of deliberation, this change also included a change in the role and responsibilities of the ratings specialists. While this was a truly difficult decision, it is one that we felt necessary to best meet client needs.
Finally, we continue to communicate with clients about all of the changes at Martindale-Hubbell, and as recently as last week we communicated our new ratings support strategy. To date the feedback has been positive and in the coming weeks we will be providing more details about our new ratings transformation.
So although rumor of the demise of our ratings is making its way around cyberspace, rest assured we are still committed to our rich ratings tradition and we still consider our ratings to be the gold standard in the industry. We’ve got big plans for Martindale-Hubbell Ratings – stay tuned.
