Every year, lawyers across the country receive recognition from Chambers, Super Lawyers, Legal 500, Best Lawyers and other legal guides. These rankings represent years of hard work, strong client relationships and successful outcomes. They are accomplishments worth celebrating, and I believe lawyers should share them.
What I’ve always found interesting, though, is how much effort goes into earning these recognitions compared to how little thought often goes into promoting them.
Lawyers spend months gathering representative matters, identifying references and participating in interviews. Marketing and business development professionals devote countless hours to preparing submissions, collecting information and managing deadlines. Clients take time out of their busy schedules to speak with researchers and provide feedback. By the time the rankings are announced, a tremendous amount of work has already taken place behind the scenes.
Then the recognition is released, and many lawyers post some version of the same announcement everyone else is posting.
They’re honored.
They’re humbled.
They’re honored and humbled.
They’re grateful.
And then the conversation ends.
There’s nothing wrong with expressing gratitude. Most lawyers genuinely appreciate the recognition. The problem is that when every announcement sounds the same, very few of them leave a lasting impression.
That’s unfortunate because these recognitions create one of the best opportunities lawyers have to tell their stories, strengthen their professional brands and deepen relationships with clients, colleagues and referral sources.
The ranking itself is important. What often gets overlooked is that the ranking isn’t actually the most interesting part. The story behind it usually is.
Why Most Ranking Announcements Get Lost in the Crowd
Every year during Chambers season, my LinkedIn feed fills up with ranking announcements. I enjoy seeing them because I know many of the lawyers receiving recognition and understand how hard they’ve worked to earn it.
After reading enough of these posts, however, they begin to sound remarkably similar.
Part of the reason is that lawyers are trained to be careful communicators. They want to be professional. They don’t want to appear boastful. They don’t want to make anyone uncomfortable.
As a result, many announcements become highly polished but largely interchangeable. The irony is that lawyers often worry about sounding self-promotional, yet the generic announcement can sometimes feel more promotional than a thoughtful story ever would. When a post consists entirely of announcing an award, readers are left with little else to focus on.
People rarely connect with the ranking itself. They connect with the experiences, challenges, relationships and lessons that contributed to the recognition. Those are the things that help someone understand who you are as a lawyer and what makes your practice distinctive.
Clients Don’t Hire Rankings
One of the biggest misconceptions I see is the belief that clients choose lawyers because of awards and rankings.
That’s not how most clients make decisions. Do rankings matter? Absolutely. They provide third-party validation. They reinforce credibility. They can help reassure prospective clients that they’re making a good choice.
But clients don’t hire a Chambers ranking. They hire a lawyer. They hire someone they trust. They hire someone who understands their business. They hire someone who can help them navigate difficult situations and achieve their objectives. The ranking serves as evidence of those qualities, but it isn’t the reason those qualities exist.
That’s why I encourage lawyers to focus less on announcing the recognition and more on demonstrating the qualities that earned the recognition in the first place.
When you tell stories about your work, your relationships and your experiences, you’re helping people understand why clients value your counsel. That’s ultimately far more persuasive than simply telling people you’ve been ranked.
The Stories People Want to Hear
One of the things I love most about working with lawyers is that they have incredible stories. Unfortunately, many of those stories never get told.
Every ranking reflects years of professional experiences that shaped a lawyer’s career. There are stories about difficult negotiations, complex transactions, high-stakes litigation, trusted client relationships, mentors who provided guidance and teams that came together to solve challenging problems.
Those stories are much more compelling than the ranking itself. For example, a lawyer who receives recognition in private equity might talk about how market conditions changed over the past year and what clients did to adapt. A healthcare lawyer might discuss a challenge clients faced and the lessons learned from helping them navigate it. A litigator might reflect on a particularly meaningful matter and what it taught them about advocacy.
The ranking can still be mentioned. In fact, it should be. But instead of serving as the entire story, it becomes part of a larger conversation. That approach creates content people are far more likely to remember.
Recognition Is Rarely an Individual Achievement
Another reason ranking announcements often feel incomplete is that they sometimes overlook the people who helped make the recognition possible. Anyone who has practiced law long enough understands that success rarely happens in isolation.
Behind every significant matter is a group of people contributing to the outcome. There are colleagues providing advice, associates handling critical aspects of the work, business professionals supporting client development efforts and clients placing their trust in the legal team.
One of the most effective ways to make a ranking announcement more meaningful is to acknowledge those contributions.
Some of the best posts I’ve seen aren’t really about the lawyer receiving the recognition at all. They’re about the team that helped make it possible. They’re about the clients who trusted the lawyer with important work. They’re about mentors who provided guidance early in a career.
These posts tend to resonate because they feel genuine. They also reveal something important about the person sharing them.
People notice professionals who share credit generously. They notice gratitude. They notice humility. Those qualities often leave a stronger impression than the ranking itself.
Personality Matters More Than Many Lawyers Realize
Lawyers often assume that professionalism requires formality. I don’t think that’s true.
Some of the most memorable ranking announcements I’ve seen included humor, personal reflections or stories that revealed something about the lawyer behind the title.
Some of the most memorable ranking announcements I’ve seen included humor, personal reflections or stories that revealed something about the lawyer behind the title.
Readers aren’t looking for a deeply personal life story. They’re looking for a glimpse of the person behind the practice. A story about a mentor, a lesson learned from a client matter or a reflection on building a career can often create far more engagement than a standard ranking announcement.
That’s because people connect with people. The more someone understands who you are and how you approach your work, the more likely they are to remember you.
When lawyers allow some personality to come through, their content becomes more engaging and more memorable. Readers get a sense of who they are rather than simply what they’ve accomplished.
This is particularly important on platforms like LinkedIn, where many professionals sound remarkably similar. The lawyers who stand out are often the ones who find a way to balance professionalism with humanity.
Using Rankings as a Business Development Tool
One of the biggest missed opportunities I see is that lawyers often treat rankings as announcements rather than business development assets.
A ranking announcement can be much more than a social media post. It can be an opportunity to reconnect with clients and referral sources. It can create a reason to reach out to former colleagues and professional contacts. It can serve as the foundation for broader thought leadership content.
For example, a lawyer recognized in a particular practice area might write an article about emerging trends affecting clients in that industry. They might create content discussing lessons learned from recent matters or observations about where the market is heading.
The ranking provides credibility, but the content provides value. That’s where the real opportunity lies.
The most effective professionals understand that recognition isn’t the finish line. It’s a starting point for conversations, relationship building and visibility.
A Better Way to Think About Rankings
I’ve never believed lawyers should be reluctant to celebrate their accomplishments. Too many talented professionals spend years doing exceptional work without ever talking about it. There’s nothing wrong with sharing good news. What I do encourage lawyers to think about is how they share it.
Instead of asking, “How do I announce this ranking?” consider asking, “What story does this recognition allow me to tell?”
Maybe it’s a story about your clients, your team, your career or lessons learned along the way. Whatever the story may be, that’s often where the real value exists.
The next time you receive recognition from Chambers, Super Lawyers, Legal 500, Best Lawyers or another legal guide, take a moment before posting. Think about the experiences that contributed to the achievement. Think about the people who helped you get there. Think about what your audience might find meaningful or useful. The ranking will capture attention. The story behind it is what people are likely to remember. That’s where you should spend your time and effort.
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