A link to an article on legal directories. These are directories like Chambers and Legal 500 that rank law firms and lawyers. Are legal directories accurate? Do they still provide value? I weigh in with some common questions and thoughts. /1 https://twitter.com/donovandnh1/status/1385472791596584962

What are the top legal directories? To me, Chambers and Legal 500. They have the most established and most thorough assessment process. But still not perfect. And I think Chambers edges out Legal 500. /2

What is criteria for Chambers and Legal 500? Submit 20 cases/transactions in a practice area. And with referees - clients, experts or foreign lawyers you work with. Directories assess strength of cases, referee feedback and peer feedback (they ask your competitors) /3

The ranking process is largely driven by your firm first submitting the cases for assessment. But, there are cases because of strong market feedback (from clients and fellow lawyers) that also results in ranking /4

Do legal directories rankings result in work? First, I have seen foreign client work. They would have checked legal directory ranking or seen ranking as a minimum quality check. Second, a local PLC also required me to put in whether we have Legal 500 ranking /5

For litigation work, the bet-the-company disputes comes from strong word-of-mouth, market reputation, referral. The billionaire founder isn’t going to look at legal directories. /6

Overall, I think legal directories rankings only form one aspect of consideration of how ‘good’ a lawyer is. But for lawyer-to-lawyer referral from and to overseas, we appreciate the assessment process. Gives us comfort when referring work and recommending. /7

Are all legal directories paid-for awards? As the users and with clients who refer to them, we start to distinguish the good independent directories from other less thorough directories. Unsophisticated to tar all rankings with the same brush /8

We also know the outright paid-for awards or certain rankings that have gone overboard and is just a money generating process for the publisher. /9