Newsflash – legal guide rankings aren’t going to get you clients. It’s just not the way in-house counsel hire lawyers anymore.
Sure these are nice awards to have – feathers in your cap – and credentialing can help with recruiting and also help smaller firms with branding – but these won’t land you clients.
They’re fluff. Especially the peer-based ones like Super Lawyers and Best Lawyers, which many of us feel forced to do to keep up with our competitors.
Rankings like Chambers and Legal 500 are a lot of work on both the lawyer and marketing sides so don’t undertake them unless you really do have the body of work to merit inclusion.
What will lead to new clients?
Being responsive, doing great work, being efficient, keeping costs down, making your client look good and being someone with whom your client enjoys working. Not the band in which you were ranked.
So before you undertake the very arduous effort of a Chambers submission or even go down the rabbit hole of Super Lawyers, take a look at this video.
And please don’t pay for a profile of any sort in these guides. For the most part, you don’t need it. Spend your money on your clients instead.
A lot of times we do these things just because we feel like we have to. Or because our competitors are doing it. Or maybe even just because we’ve done it in the past. I say now is the time to really evaluate what you’ve been doing and why. If somebody really wants to find out information about you and your firm they will.
If you need help deciding whether to move forward with putting yourself forth for one of these guides, feel free to contact me to discuss creating a strategy to get ranked especially if you are a small or midsize firm.