Legal Marketing & PR

Vote for Your Own Firm in the Inside Counsel Rankings

By Larry Bodine, Esq.

Inside Counsel magazine is giving its readers a chance to rate law firms on 8 factors, such as "quality of service" and "responsiveness." There are dozens of firms to choose from, and if your firm is not on the list -- you can yourself to it.  It's like voting for your favorite restaurant or TV show.

Editor-in-chief Robert Vosper asserts that only registered users who are in-house counsel can rank a firm.  However, It took me only 60 seconds to register and vote.  I am the corporate executive who selects the lawyers for one of several corporations I operate, so I am the VP and General Counsel.  I added one of my favorite client law firms to the list and gave it top rankings in value of service, quality of service, client/customer service, billing accuracy, adherence to budget, willingness to negotiate fees, value-added services and breadth of services.

I suppose some nasty person could pick out their competitors and give them low rankings. But people wouldn't do nasty things on the Web, would they?

The mag used to be called Corporate Legal Times and you can get a free subscription to Inside Counsel by clicking here. As of this moment, the top firms for value of service are:

1. O'Melveny & Myers
2. Jones, Day, Reavis & Pogue
3. Seyfarth Shaw 

For quality of service the top three are:

1. Jones, Day, Reavis & Pogue
2. Perkins Coie
3. Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal

Ironically, Vosper says in the "From the Editor" column in the January 2008 issue, "I've always found this whole ranking thing to be a bit unsavory.  Many of these lists are either pay-to-play or are based on data supplied by the law firms themselves."   [ I couldn't agree more.]

He goes on: "Few, if any, of these lists are helpful to in-house counsel.  Why is it important , for instance, that a firm is ranked among the top 100 grossing firms in the country (other than the fact these firms should be more willing do reduce their rates)?  And can you really trust that the data submitted by these firms is accurate?"  [You said it buddy!]

Then he totally blows it by saying, "With that in mind, we devised a law firm ranking that can't be gamed and is actually useful.  We are calling it the IC-I list."  [Sorry, you lost me.  Didn't you just say these phony-baloney rankings are "unsavory"?]

So tell your clients, consultants, marketers and buddies to register and vote for you. Call up a friend at another law firm and agree to vote for each other.  The results will be published in October.  Maybe then the publishers will start to give up on these silly rankings.

Full post as published by Larry Bodine's LawMarketing Blog on January 24, 2008 (boomark / email).