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Leaders in Legal Business
Lawyer and Law Firm Directories and Rankings Derek Benton1
Martindale-Hubbell
Former Director
International Operations
Introduction
The aim of this article is to explore the landscape of legal directories and rankings to provide the reader
with a simplified yet useful viewpoint that will offer insight to anyone looking to invest time and money with the
publishers and online providers of these directories.
Directories have established a place in law firm marketing activity and have a degree of importance not
seen in other professional services. The main reason for this is the historical restrictions on advertising and the
ethical rules on client solicitation imposed by the bar associations and law society memberships in most
jurisdictions across the world. Up to the late 1980s law firms were limited and circumspect in their promotional
activity. Legal directories were little more than bar association rosters or member lists. In the United States,
Martindale-Hubbell, which began in 1868, had firmly established a fairly comprehensive nationwide lawyer
listing service with “Peer Review” ratings by the 1930s because of the need to refer work across state lines.
Differentiation had arrived, and an independent publisher’s role was accepted. It took several more decades; the
massive expansion of the legal profession in the 1960s and ‘70s in the U.S.; and relaxation of laws hemming in
overt competition in North America and Western Europe in the late 1980s to see ratings and rankings for the
clients’ benefit develop. The print medium produced limitations on the size and range of the audience for legal
directories because of production and shipping costs, but key advances in the sophistication of directory offerings
were made after 1991 with the arrival of the commercial Internet.
Defining the landscape is the first step to understanding. The term “legal directory” has different meanings
in various segments of the legal services market. A unified view of what defines a directory has been blurred by
the online world — think LinkedIn — and by specialist business information offered by the Internet and traditional
publishing — for instance, lawyer profiles found in the International Financial Law Review (IFLR), which are a
featured element within a legal journal.
Classification of directories by their respective purposes is the most direct route to understanding their
usefulness in terms of business strategy and value to a lawyer, a law firm, and its clientele. The many available
directory offerings allow the law firm the benefit of defining itself in its chosen marketplace, contributing to
internal and external clarity of services, and positioning to clients and potential clients.
In principle the main functions of a directory are to direct and guide. Therefore, the primary consideration
in the utility of a directory is how well it provides access to content that is relevant to its users. This is increasingly
achieved through an effective position on the Internet. Secondly, it is how useful the content is, as a guide to the
services available in a competitive market place, in terms of who and where are the firms and what they offer.
Ratings and rankings provide value to users through differentiation of choice. The one aspect of directories’ core
value that should not be overlooked is how well it performs in search and location of the data on the Internet. This
is critical to accessing valuable content.
People use directories to find firms and individuals, make selections, validate information, verify facts,
or provide leads for ongoing research. For a law firm, directories are marketing and communication channels that
lead to buyers, and also a tool to present and shape a public image. For the user and law firms contributing, the
1 Derek Benton was responsible for Martindale-Hubbell operations outside the U.S. He joined Reed Elsevier, parent of the LexisNexis group, in 1982. At
Martindale, Derek has been involved in setting up European-based sales, marketing, and product development teams as well as the Counsel to Counsel
forum for in-house lawyers. Having experienced law firm marketing in numerous jurisdictions, Derek has helped shape LexisNexis Martindale-Hubbell’s
(LNMH) publishing and services.
15
Lawyer and Law Firm Directories and Rankings Derek Benton1
Martindale-Hubbell
Former Director
International Operations
Introduction
The aim of this article is to explore the landscape of legal directories and rankings to provide the reader
with a simplified yet useful viewpoint that will offer insight to anyone looking to invest time and money with the
publishers and online providers of these directories.
Directories have established a place in law firm marketing activity and have a degree of importance not
seen in other professional services. The main reason for this is the historical restrictions on advertising and the
ethical rules on client solicitation imposed by the bar associations and law society memberships in most
jurisdictions across the world. Up to the late 1980s law firms were limited and circumspect in their promotional
activity. Legal directories were little more than bar association rosters or member lists. In the United States,
Martindale-Hubbell, which began in 1868, had firmly established a fairly comprehensive nationwide lawyer
listing service with “Peer Review” ratings by the 1930s because of the need to refer work across state lines.
Differentiation had arrived, and an independent publisher’s role was accepted. It took several more decades; the
massive expansion of the legal profession in the 1960s and ‘70s in the U.S.; and relaxation of laws hemming in
overt competition in North America and Western Europe in the late 1980s to see ratings and rankings for the
clients’ benefit develop. The print medium produced limitations on the size and range of the audience for legal
directories because of production and shipping costs, but key advances in the sophistication of directory offerings
were made after 1991 with the arrival of the commercial Internet.
Defining the landscape is the first step to understanding. The term “legal directory” has different meanings
in various segments of the legal services market. A unified view of what defines a directory has been blurred by
the online world — think LinkedIn — and by specialist business information offered by the Internet and traditional
publishing — for instance, lawyer profiles found in the International Financial Law Review (IFLR), which are a
featured element within a legal journal.
Classification of directories by their respective purposes is the most direct route to understanding their
usefulness in terms of business strategy and value to a lawyer, a law firm, and its clientele. The many available
directory offerings allow the law firm the benefit of defining itself in its chosen marketplace, contributing to
internal and external clarity of services, and positioning to clients and potential clients.
In principle the main functions of a directory are to direct and guide. Therefore, the primary consideration
in the utility of a directory is how well it provides access to content that is relevant to its users. This is increasingly
achieved through an effective position on the Internet. Secondly, it is how useful the content is, as a guide to the
services available in a competitive market place, in terms of who and where are the firms and what they offer.
Ratings and rankings provide value to users through differentiation of choice. The one aspect of directories’ core
value that should not be overlooked is how well it performs in search and location of the data on the Internet. This
is critical to accessing valuable content.
People use directories to find firms and individuals, make selections, validate information, verify facts,
or provide leads for ongoing research. For a law firm, directories are marketing and communication channels that
lead to buyers, and also a tool to present and shape a public image. For the user and law firms contributing, the
1 Derek Benton was responsible for Martindale-Hubbell operations outside the U.S. He joined Reed Elsevier, parent of the LexisNexis group, in 1982. At
Martindale, Derek has been involved in setting up European-based sales, marketing, and product development teams as well as the Counsel to Counsel
forum for in-house lawyers. Having experienced law firm marketing in numerous jurisdictions, Derek has helped shape LexisNexis Martindale-Hubbell’s
(LNMH) publishing and services.
15
