Page 30 - Legal Leaders 2018 Master Copy - 999
P. 30
Directories recognize such achievements, and celebrate the excellence and success of
lawyers.
Everyone wants to be part of a winning team, and a strong legal directory performance is
good for internal morale within law firms.
Profile Raising
Law firms are low key and will rarely grab the headlines in the mainstream news and
business media, so specialist publications like legal directories have emerged to publicize law
firms’ activities.
Directories will typically request written information from law firms to enable them to
learn more about their work.
Law firms engage in this process because it provides a valuable outlet for them to raise
their profile and bring the quality of their work to the wider market — to clients, prospective
buyers of legal services, potential hires, students, and others involved in the legal sector.
Different Types of Directories
Directory/Listing
This is a straightforward listing of law firms, broken down by a range of categories such
as location and practice.
The best-known directory of this type in the legal sector is Martindale-Hubbell.
Formed by James Martindale in New Jersey in 1868, it later linked up with “Hubbell’s
Legal Directory,” and the first edition of the “Martindale-Hubbell Law Directory” was published
in 1931.
Later owned by the LexisNexis division of Reed Elsevier, the product became the major
force in legal directory publishing in the twentieth century.
Martindale has passed into new ownership in recent years and refocused as a marketing
services provider for smaller law firms.
As the internet took off in the mid-to-late 1990s, a new generation of online directories
emerged.
HG.org (formerly Hieros Gamos) was one of the early pioneers in the legal directory
world, with its online site dating back to 1995.
That was soon followed by Lawyers.com (later owned by LexisNexis), FindLaw
(Thomson Reuters), and others.
Avvo, which launched in 2006, has become the most heavily trafficked legal directory —
offering a modern take on the traditional lawyer listing with a host of additional features, such as
online reviews, question and answers, and a proprietary scoring system.
Other prominent directories of this type include Justia, Nolo (now owned by Internet
Brands, the new parent of Martindale-Hubbell) and LawInfo (Thomson Reuters).
Yelp.com and other consumer review sites are also popular in the consumer legal space.
At the time of writing (October 2017), Best Lawyers, in partnership with U.S. News &
World Report, has just announced the launch of a comprehensive listing directory that will
feature every lawyer in the U.S. — 1.3 million people.
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lawyers.
Everyone wants to be part of a winning team, and a strong legal directory performance is
good for internal morale within law firms.
Profile Raising
Law firms are low key and will rarely grab the headlines in the mainstream news and
business media, so specialist publications like legal directories have emerged to publicize law
firms’ activities.
Directories will typically request written information from law firms to enable them to
learn more about their work.
Law firms engage in this process because it provides a valuable outlet for them to raise
their profile and bring the quality of their work to the wider market — to clients, prospective
buyers of legal services, potential hires, students, and others involved in the legal sector.
Different Types of Directories
Directory/Listing
This is a straightforward listing of law firms, broken down by a range of categories such
as location and practice.
The best-known directory of this type in the legal sector is Martindale-Hubbell.
Formed by James Martindale in New Jersey in 1868, it later linked up with “Hubbell’s
Legal Directory,” and the first edition of the “Martindale-Hubbell Law Directory” was published
in 1931.
Later owned by the LexisNexis division of Reed Elsevier, the product became the major
force in legal directory publishing in the twentieth century.
Martindale has passed into new ownership in recent years and refocused as a marketing
services provider for smaller law firms.
As the internet took off in the mid-to-late 1990s, a new generation of online directories
emerged.
HG.org (formerly Hieros Gamos) was one of the early pioneers in the legal directory
world, with its online site dating back to 1995.
That was soon followed by Lawyers.com (later owned by LexisNexis), FindLaw
(Thomson Reuters), and others.
Avvo, which launched in 2006, has become the most heavily trafficked legal directory —
offering a modern take on the traditional lawyer listing with a host of additional features, such as
online reviews, question and answers, and a proprietary scoring system.
Other prominent directories of this type include Justia, Nolo (now owned by Internet
Brands, the new parent of Martindale-Hubbell) and LawInfo (Thomson Reuters).
Yelp.com and other consumer review sites are also popular in the consumer legal space.
At the time of writing (October 2017), Best Lawyers, in partnership with U.S. News &
World Report, has just announced the launch of a comprehensive listing directory that will
feature every lawyer in the U.S. — 1.3 million people.
16
