Marketing
Chair's Column
U.S. News Law Firm Rankings Are Poised to Change the Ratings Game
This is part one of a two-part column on the hotly contested topic of law firm and lawyer ratings and rankings services. Part two will detail the results of the program and accompanying attendee survey from November's ABA Law Firm Marketing Strategies Conference.
I married up in life. I’m ranked a lowly #65 in the latest polls while my wife sits at #3. Meanwhile, in the rankings that really matter to me, the Temple Owls moved up to #20 in the AP poll and #16 in the coaches’ poll. This makes the coaches’ methodology far superior (to me) in the race for NCAA Basketball Tournament seeding.
The first ratings I refer to, though, are those as conferred upon, respectively, my law school (Temple University School of Law at #65) and my wife’s business school (Wharton at #3) by the annual rankings from U.S. News & World Reports.
Once again, the ABA Law Practice Management Section was way ahead of the game when it made the centerpiece of November’s ABA Law Firm Marketing Strategies Conference a two-hour session featuring the leading U.S. providers of rankings and ratings in the legal sector. The audience, including a panel of in-house counsel, was asked to listen to each company’s explanation of methodology and methods. As you would expect, people had differing opinions on whom or what was better.
Four months later, at the ABA Midyear Meeting in Orlando, Florida, the ABA adopted a resolution to “examine any efforts to publish national, state, territorial and local rankings of law firms and law schools."
The New York State Bar Association (NYSBA), which prompted the resolution, said that their efforts were prompted by the plan of U.S. News & World Reports, in partnership with Best Lawyers, to publish a ranking of the best law firms in the country. They pointed to one of multiple studies that have disputed the U.S. News current school rankings as problematic.
The Changing Landscape
The ratings business has been around for a long, long time. It is more the dissemination of this data that has changed than the arguments over methodology and credibility. First, of course, is the World Wide Web—which replicates the information a thousand times over in regard to audience and reach. A subsection of that is the more recent game-changer of social networking that takes control over all data out of the hands of the company and firm, and hands the power over to the individual and the network he or she seeks to build. You can position yourself with reviews, referrals and recommendations on LinkedIn, at no cost. And everyone can rank first in whatever they say they do. Blogs also are positioning people as leaders in the field, regardless of how knowledgeable you may or may not be.
In an effort to seek new ways of publishing and selling rankings to the public at large, efforts like Chambers and Partners simply shifted the questioning. You can argue that a peer is better suited to judge legal supremacy over a client, or vice versa. The only thing really USA about Chambers USA is the title. They still show a U.K. focus and it is probably some of that European lore that acted as a differentiator for some. In the end, they sell the information they research and are no better or worse than any other entity named in this column. They themselves consider Legal 500, another U.K. product, to be their chief competitor.
The argument put forth in the ABA conversation at Midyear Meeting about the power of the U.S. News brand needs to be augmented by the post-meeting purchase of Super Lawyers by Thomson Reuters. The concern about having an audience outside the space we control is frightening to many.
Also, in recent months, the Association of Corporate Counsel tried entering the fray, with its ACC Value Index, which was quickly thrashed by critics. This is a tough arena to play in. While the ACC touts its exclusivity to the in-house bar, it frequently relies on big money from big law firms to pay the freight. You can’t get them mad—sponsorship money and trade show space is at stake.
In legal marketing circles, those that have to complete much of the paperwork are frustrated by the boatload of additional demands these rankings create. However, they have no say in this conversation. It is the lawyers themselves that will or will not choose to participate. All a firm needs to do to avoid participating is simply not do it.
Another great irony in this most recent controversy is the underlying motives for even running a ratings system. For most of the players involved, this is a big money endeavor. The “products” vary, but they all sell something—ranging from profiles, plaques and honorary dinners to books, article placement and additional advertising opportunities. The “ego sell,” as I often refer to it with my own law firm clients, is a huge multimillion-dollar industry. And make no mistake; I spend a lot of time with law firm clients working on their ratings submissions (and make money doing it). There is another entire cottage industry selling a variety of ratings guidance—from databases that ease the process to tips from “insiders” on how to score big. Be sure to attend the next webinar on “how to score” with a guest panel of influencers and influences that are sure to increase the size of your … rating scores.
The Players
Who are the real players in this industry?
There is the granddaddy of them all, Martindale-Hubbell. Remember when life was just about being AV rated? They have been forced to change up their business model multiple times in the last dozen years or so. They have had to move the business model from print to online. They have had to adjust to being part of LexisNexis. And they have had to adjust to the multitude of competing rankings. In some cases, they have taken the “if you can’t beat them, join them” approach.
There are purely online entities like Avvo and Lawdragon—both completely different in approach and target audience. Avvo is geared toward a consumer market and sees their rankings as being of a proprietary nature (comparing it to Google not telling people exactly how they configure things). They have been no stranger to controversy since their launch, battling the same people who are not happy with certain results. Lawdragon is more of a corporate law model, staying somewhat under the radar of critics.
Best Lawyers may be considered the oldest pure ratings entity in the legal profession. They too have had to change the way they do business in a world of changing competition. Super Lawyers has come under fire for questions about its methodology. But I would argue that Super Lawyers gets criticized for its aggressive approach to selling advertising than for anything else. Like Findlaw, they are just another product to tag onto Westlaw sales.
Publishing rankings under the guise of “editorial” is another route a few companies have successfully taken. Chambers USA publishes snippets of comments from lawyers and clients, bundled together in bands of ratings. It is interesting to see how that business has changed as well. The cost and opportunities to spend money with them has increased. By changing from ranking by number to ranking in “bands,” more lawyers and law firms can say they lay claim to varying levels of greatness. Thus, the ability to sell more to more happy customers. American Lawyer Media (ALM) does the same thing through a multitude of rankings and ratings ranging from The American Lawyer to local law publications and practice-specific newsletters. While they control a great deal of the “legal publishing” space, they are limited in audience to lawyers congratulating lawyers.
Whether you are Martindale, Chambers, Super, Best, American, Dragon or otherwise, these businesses exist to do what businesses do—generate revenue and make money. In the case of Martindale and Super Lawyers, they are owned by companies dependent on selling hundreds of millions of dollars of services to law firms each year. In other words, they can not afford to ever go negative. With Super now owned by Reuters, they have access to editorial distribution that goes far beyond the legal space. This leads us to the reason there is such great fear and trepidation with U.S. News.
The reason that the U.S. News rankings that already exist have so much power is that they are seen as an independent, editorial judge. Are they any more or less subjective than anyone else? Probably not. But they do not rely on lawyers to buy stuff from them. They do not worry about losing any lawyer advertising revenue. The public at large knows that any ranking or rating is subjective. They are (and will be) the judge of credibility and authenticity.
For me, the real issue is not in the way that lawyers and law firms operate under these systems, but how it impacts the buying public. While we spend a great deal of time creating and enforcing advertising restrictions to protect John and Jane Q.—on Web sites, billboards, TV, radio and print—the use of such “honors” really blurs those efforts and creates a much more significant chance of “deceptive and misleading.” The debate here should be one of ethics and professionalism—not about the ratings entities themselves.
In the ABA resolution debate—a late addition to the agenda and a close vote—opponents were concerned about antitrust and First Amendment implications. ABA President Carolyn Lamm, a New York lawyer herself, seemed to think, based on my take on it, this was not something the organization should take a position on, and saw the legal concerns as real. If you want to see an example of a similar failed attempt to interfere with rankings (and the First Amendment), just go to New Jersey—where the raters battled the bar and prevailed. My personal opinion is that this resolution has all the teeth and likely impact of the city of Philadelphia proclaiming it “Phillies Day” during the World Series. It is a nice thing to think about.
I have my own experience in the ratings game. In 2001, I decided to rate law firm Web sites, complete with scores and commentary. There are those that love them and those that hate them. Is my opinion subjective? Of course, it is. The problem for those firms that were reviewed is that I was not selling anything. It was more a hobby than anything else. A few years later, I might have just created a blog. But, you see, I did not ask you for your opinion. I was going to give mine. And there lies the rub of U.S. News. The ratings game for law firms, because it is tied to the business of Best Lawyers, will not have the exact same ability to function the way they do for the school rankings. Schools have threatened to sue, boycott and shred copies of U.S. News for years. Yet, like an annual rite of passage, they prepare for the ratings process—and those schools that finish high tout that from the rooftops.
I found it amusing that the NYSBA president thanked a leader of his bar for leadership on this ABA resolution. Why? Because the opening paragraph of that attorney’s bio, on his own law firm’s web site, cites being selected to Best Lawyers. The same Best Lawyers running the U.S. News rankings. When the “Best Law Firms” is released this September, do you think the #1 firm will not be promoting it by lunchtime? This is in no way meant to criticize the NYSBA effort, but if you are going to lead the fight—start by leading by example. Don’t fill out the ballot, submit clients or references, and scrub your marketing materials of such accolades.
There is nothing forcing any lawyer or law firm to participate in any of these ratings services. As a matter of fact, the work that often goes into participating can be time-consuming and cumbersome. I urge you, if you do not like the whole business of ratings, to simply not participate. You just need to knock on the doors of your partners—the Supers, Bests and others—and tell them to stop. Good luck with that.
About the Author
Micah Buchdahl, Chair of the ABA Law Practice Management Section, is an attorney and President of HTMLawyers, dedicated to guiding law firms through business development strategies and implementation.
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