August 2019 - SavageNash

The Legal 500 US 2020 – An interview with US Editors Ian Deering and Helen Donegan

Posted on 29 August 2019 | by Alex Boyes

2019 has seen several interesting developments to The Legal 500’s US guide. Following former US Editor Seth Singh Jennings’s move to pastures new, Senior Researcher Ian Deering was appointed joint US Editor alongside Helen Donegan, who joined The Legal 500 in 2019 and has more than a decade of experience in legal publishing. I sat down with Helen and Ian ahead of the publication of the 2020 US research guidelines (now available here) to discuss their aims and objectives for the US guide over the next 12 months and beyond – here are some key takeaways from that discussion.

On the Editors’ respective remits

Having two editors on one guide is a novel approach for The Legal 500, which has historically had one Editor in charge of the guide per jurisdiction.

Ian’s focus will be on the rankings and editorial content produced in the US guide itself, while Helen’s remit will be on creating new, US-focused content across The Legal 500’s other content platforms and products, including their GCand fivehundredmagazines.

Given the all-encompassing nature of The Legal 500 US guide, separating out the roles of overseeing the research into and production of the US rankings and editorial, and that of generating new editorial content for The Legal 500’s various other publications and initiatives, will enable the editorial team to maintain the high quality of the core US guide while also giving them the opportunity to expand the scope of their coverage into areas that would not necessarily fit within the guide’s methodology and remit.

On the topics the new content will be covering

Helen is looking at a number of topics to cover in the coming months, largely driven by discussions with law firms in the US as well as feedback from the GC community – these include areas such as legal tech and leadership, although a key priority will be diversity and inclusion (D&I). Given the increasing role that D&I is playing in client purchasing decisions, the directories have been exploring ways to showcase firms with strong D&I initiatives and stories to tell. Given the relatively structured approach to researching the US rankings and editorial for the guide, providing a specific platform to showcase D&I and other developing areas of legal business will give the editorial team space to do deep dives into these areas.

The work being done to showcase the US legal market’s approach to D&I will form part of a broader approach to D&I across the jurisdictions covered by The Legal 500.

On US law firms’ response to the new initiatives

While US law firms have primarily engaged with The Legal 500 through the guide, the response to the new editorial initiatives has been positive. The proliferation of “pay-to-play” operators has made the US legal market decidedly wary of new products from new market entrants, so an established player like The Legal 500 seeking to drive engagement through free content is a welcome breath of fresh air.

Helen emphasised the importance of dialogue with US law firms and the GC community, and encourages firms to get in touch to discuss how they can take part in these new editorial initiatives.

On the upcoming US research

In addition to the new editorial content, we also discussed plans for the rankings and accompanying editorial. If you’ve pored over the recently released submission guidelines, you’ll see that The Legal 500 will not be introducing any new practice areas. However the team has introduced practice area definitions this year, the first time The Legal 500 has done so for any of its guides.

These definitions (which are available to review in the “Practice Areas” section on The Legal 500’s US submissions page) will provide valuable guidance to firms submitting this year (if you’re weighing the pros and cons of submitting this year, this article might help), Ian was keen to stress that these guidelines are open to change, and encouraged firms to get in touch with any feedback on how these definitions could be updated.

We also discussed planned changes to the format of the guide’s editorial coverage. Editorial paragraphs will have separate sections focusing on the practice, key clients, work and individuals – long-time devotees of The Legal 500 may recall the first US guides adopted a similar structure. The new format will enable the editorial team to utilise more of the information provided by firms in their submissions.

On Ian and Helen’s US travel plans

As part of their ongoing engagement with the US legal market, Ian and Helen will be travelling extensively as part of their respective roles. Having recently returned from trips to New York and Washington DC, Ian will be jetting off to visit firms in San Francisco, and also plans to travel to Chicago and Texas in the coming months. Helen will be visiting New York in September. If you are interested in meeting them while they’re doing the rounds, do get in touch with them to set up a meeting. Here are their contact details:

Ian Deering – E-mail: ian.deering@legal500.com Tel: +44 (0)207 031 0014

Helen Donegan – E-mail: Helen.Donegan@legal500.com Tel: +44 (0)20 7070 0403.

If you have any questions about the upcoming US research and the new editorial initiatives discussed here, Helen and Ian would be delighted to hear from you.

My name is Alex Boyes and I am one of the directors at SavageNash Legal Communications. I’m a former editor at The Legal 500 and also worked at a large international law firm. Together, SavageNash Legal Communications has over 40 years’ directories-related experience, from both sides of the directories process. If you’d like more guidance on making submissions to Chambers or The Legal 500 in the next cycle, please do get in touch via our website or on LinkedIn.

To Submit Or Not To Submit: When is the right time to push for a ranking?

Posted on 20 August 2019 | by Alex Boyes

As a certain Danish prince knows all too well, indecision can be a killer. You may feel your practice has all the ingredients for a ranking, but there might be a nagging doubt keeping you from committing those precious hours to pull together a submission. After all, there’s nothing more frustrating than putting all that time and effort into the directories submission process only to result in no ranking and much soul searching. Helpfully there is some groundwork that can be done before drafting a submission. Below are some tips to consider when mulling over whether to submit.

Reading last year’s rankings

This may seem obvious, but looking at last year’s rankings – not just at which firms/individuals were ranked, but also at what was written about the ranked firms – can be a useful starting point when assessing your practice’s prospects for a ranking. Compare and contrast your practice’s work and team with the ranked firms – does that work match up in terms of scope, scale and complexity? If the answer is yes, then it would most likely be worth submitting.

Do you regularly see ranked firms on the other side of matters? Not only is that a good indication that you should be submitting for this area, researchers will also take this into account, so make sure you’re highlighting the point in your submissions.

The definition conundrum

Figuring out what work does and doesn’t fall within the scope of the relevant practice area can be a challenging one, particularly as these can differ in some subtle and not-so-subtle ways between the various directories. Codified definitions are a helpful starting point where available (Chambers and Partners provides practice area definitions on its website here), but those are not always available or as clear as they could be. When in doubt (and where an examination of last year’s rankings as above doesn’t clarify the situation), it’s always worth reaching out to the directory directly. The relevant editor will be able to provide specific advice on what type of work should be covered in a submission and what should be omitted.

Why is it important to lock this down before you start pulling together a submission? On the practice’s side, there’s nothing more frustrating than going through the process of gathering your strongest work highlights only to be told that many of those matters don’t fall within the scope of the relevant practice area. From the perspective of the researcher, having to sift through a submission full of extraneous information can be equally irksome – researchers have to review large volumes of data in pretty tight timeframes, so providing clear, concise and relevant information will be greatly appreciated.

It’s a marathon, not a sprint – the importance of demonstrating track record

The directories place a fairly heavy emphasis on a practice’s track record, particularly when looking at possible new entrants to the rankings. That’s great if you have a well-established practice – highlighting the practice’s past work highlights will help to illustrate that track record – but what if the practice is a nascent one? You have a couple of options: wait until the practice has some time and experience under its belt before submitting, or putting in a submission straight out of the gate. The former might seem more sensible than the latter, however putting in a submission early on into the practice’s lifespan – even if the prospects of a ranking off the back of that submission might be slim – could help to lay a foundation on which to build in subsequent submissions. Researchers will take notice if you can point to past submissions as a demonstration of the practice’s growth trajectory and track record of work, so think of a submission as an investment into a future ranking in that instance.

Learning from past attempts

As strange as it may sound, one of the benefits of submitting and failing to get a ranking is the ability to ask for feedback on how your submission failed to meet the criteria for entry. This will enable you to address those points in future submissions and strengthen the prospects of attaining a ranking. The initial disappointment of failing to achieve a ranking can be mitigated by the knowledge that you have access to data that can help you refine and improve your messaging going forward.

The Legal 500 will provide detailed feedback on request while Chambers and Partners will provide limited feedback, however detailed insight can be purchased through their Chambers Unpublished product which, while expensive, can be a worthwhile investment on a selective basis. If opting to go this route, the best approach would be to target core practice areas.

Although these tips have largely focused on submissions for areas where a practice has previously not been ranked, this also applies for ranked practices that want feedback on how to improve their rankings. In addition to doing the above, reviewing what the directories wrote about your practice can provide some additional insight. Some of the things to look out for include the following: Lack of feedback (indicates that your referees were unresponsive or failed to provide substantive feedback); unimpressive work highlight information (may suggest that more work needs to be done to improve the quality/detail of the work highlights supplied in the submission); a narrow focus on one aspect of the practice (may indicate that more work needs to be done to substantiate your work highlight information with evidence).

There will always be an element of jumping into the unknown when it comes to submitting to the directories for the first time/submitting for a new practice area, but incorporating the tips above will help to manage expectations and provide the best possible case for making a submission.

The NFL and Directories – The Stretch

Posted on 12 August 2019 | by Mike Nash

They say don’t combine business with pleasure. Sage advice. I’m going to ignore it.

You see, The Legal 500 EMEA deadline is here and so is the NFL Preseason. And there are only three more Sundays until the next Chambers USA and Europe deadlines. Yup, you guessed it: only three more Sundays until the NFL Regular Season.

Anyone who’s spent enough time in my company will know I’ve spent a long time working in directories and even longer loving American football. There are more links between these things than you can possibly imagine.

So, in a sequence of tenuous segues and comparators, I mash up some powerful lessons for legal directories out of the magic of the NFL. If you feel the need to look away, do so now! Law firms can end up saying the same things as other law firms, much in the way that NFL teams copy what works and often run the same offense (US spelling for this as it seems wrong to use UK spelling in this context!). So be the Ravens, not the Lions. But be Juju, not Antonio.

Bonus points if you figured out who Philip Rivers thinks is wide open in the picture above.

Lesson 1) The Longest Yard. No, not the film. I mean Kevin Dyson catching a pass from the late, lamented Steve McNair (RIP) and straining every sinew to get the ball across the line on the final play of Super Bowl XXXIV but being held one yard short by the iron grip of Mike Jones. One of the best Super Bowls ever played. And simultaneously the worst, if you’re a Titans fan. It was also the last and only time the Titans made the Big Dance. But there’s always next year. Or this year!

Translation: Don’t let last year’s ranking disappointment, erm, disappoint you. Just like an NFL team with $177 million for player salaries this year, keep trucking for the next cycle. Persistence pays off because the directories want to see consistent performance over time. Learn from the errors of last year with honest self-analysis: what’s new? What’s different? What did the directories tell us? What didn’t the directories tell us? What does the writeup reveal? Modify the messages for this year to show what you do outstandingly well, not just an everyone-says-it list of what you can do. If your client referees didn’t respond, change the list for this year and communicate to them how quick and painless it is for them but how important it is to you. Promise them a year off from being a referee if they reply!

Lesson 2) Moving on. You might be Mike McCarthy but, now that you’ve moved on, you’re still Mike McCarthy and you still need a job. When you get a job, you still won’t have Aaron Rodgers; even worse, you’ve been replaced by a young offensive mind who was such an offensive genius that it took him nigh on half a season to work out THAT DERRICK HENRY IS A BEAST and you could, you know, hand him the ball once in a while and things might go better. Life isn’t fair, Mike McCarthy. When you’re Andy Reid, meanwhile, you have a big name and an emerging superstar. But you didn’t win a Super Bowl at your last place of employment (the one which won a Super Bowl without you just after you left) and now your current team just looked like world beaters until being ground into the dust just short of the aforementioned Big Dance. So, what does this season hold for you?

Translation: It’s common for big-name lawyers and teams of lawyers to expect the directories to transpose a prior ranking of the person or practice from one law firm to another. But it doesn’t always work out that way and the benefit of the move needs to be outlined and evidenced. Here are steps you can take to improve the chances that it does: (1) make sure the move is brought to the attention of the researcher prominently, and update the researcher if the move happens during the research period; (2) substantiate the person’s move by showcasing which clients or pieces of work have moved over to the new practice – the directories want to see that the lawyer/team is still in demand and clients following is a sure sign. If the move occurred in a tricky period – just before the submission deadline or after research ended – then update the researcher as you go along. A deadline that is in September, for example, might not finish research until 1-3 months later, so use that period to gather some new work highlights for the new arrival and provide them to the researcher during the research period. (3) Make sure to provide client referees to support the lawyer or team. Lastly, (4) be patient. If the move happened soon before research, then it might take a year for enough clients to move across for you to be able to make the convincing argument for the team or lawyer to be ranked higher. If, like Andy Reid, you have a rising star in your team (of counsel, senior associate, young partner), make sure to flag it up to the directories and substantiate their case for recognition. This is going to help the individual but it’s also going to help show the team’s depth of talent. Let’s assume you can’t put them on an NFL field for a critical no-look pass, so let’s just settle for evidencing the work they’ve been involved in and making sure some of the client referees can speak about them.

Lesson 3) The Stretch. Stretching is important. Keeps those hamstrings loose. Winning down the stretch is important, otherwise your 6-2 start turns into a 9-7 limp backwards into the Playoffs and a first-round loss. Jeff Fisher is Bill Belichick is a stretch. Tom Brady* is the most successful quarterback in NFL history. Blake Bortles is not. To take the decision to pay Blake Bortles vast sums in an effort to persuade yourselves and the public that he will lead the path to greatness would be a stretch. Oh. Wait. You did what?

Translation: Don’t pad the unpaddable. I’m talking arguments in favour of a law firm’s practice here, not shoulder pads. It is an unadorned truth that most good to excellent law firm practices in any area of the law could (and usually do) say in their directory submissions that they can do everything. The issue is that any researcher will be presented with anything from high dozens to 150 submissions saying much the same during one reporting period (across one jurisdiction or multiple practice areas), thus said similar messages from many sources blur into one. So, dial in on what the practice has done exceptionally well (a) traditionally and (b) recently and make those the focus. Aside from a brief acknowledgement of the practice’s comprehensive scope, focus opening arguments on the points of difference. When set against a field of a dozen or so law firms with similar scope and presenting high-calibre work, it’s the sophisticated, difficult, innovative and/or just downright biggest ever which make the difference. Placement of the most impactful (precedent-setting or first of a kind / largest) deals and cases high up the running order is a crucial part of that because researchers wade through thousands of examples of work. State the difference-making nature of the matter explicitly, rather than leaving it implicit on the assumption that it speaks for itself. Often, it doesn’t.

*Note to Pats fans: I said most successful. Note to 49ers fans: I said most successful.

Lesson 4) Ringing the Bell. The NFL has come a long way in terms of health safeguards since the issue of concussion arose. Many other sports have now followed suit with concussion protocol tests for players suspected of being injured in this way. Helmets are more loose-fitting. Team-mates and opponents no longer “ring the bell”. Certain types of tackles and techniques have been outlawed from the game or become obsolete. The demise of the XFL rather proved that spear tackles are gone for good. After one of the biggest crises the game has endured, the NFL has been upfront about how it is working to make things better.

Translation: In the same forward-looking spirit, it is worth considering your law firm’s statistics and initiatives for diversity, inclusion and wellbeing. These are subjects which have come up regularly in questions over the past year or so as both Chambers and The Legal 500 begin to explore these issues more fully, and to champion mental health and wellbeing in the law. It’s pretty likely that in the foreseeably near future one or other of the major directories will request D&I and wellbeing information in its submission processes; some processes for certain awards and national directories already request it. If one major directory does so, the other is sure to follow suit. Your law firm might be hesitant to release such information, for fear of looking bad. But the law firms which accept they have work to do and show the improvements and efforts they are making will earn some measure of credit for doing so. I would expect a minority of law firms to provide such information in the first year it is requested, but then more to follow the next year as many law firms realise their situation is comparable with or better than some of their peer law firms. So, why not be forward-thinking to collate and voluntarily supply information on these statistics and initiatives in your next round of submissions before you’re requested to provide it? You can only affect the conversation by being in it.

Lesson 5) Trust the process. Do. Your. Job. You might not like the Pats, but you have to acknowledge (genuine) greatness when you see it. A dominant franchise and the sport’s best coach combined with its most successful quarterback* and a rolling cast of important contributors from great to small. Imitations abound. Famously working to the maxim: Do Your Job. Trusting the process – that if you do yours, your teammates will do theirs.

Translation: Directories season is a grind for each practice but it’s essential to do it right if you want results. Claims need to be substantiated and you must have fresh examples of relevant work and client referees to push the case for a practice or its lawyers. If one aspect of information or another is missing, little by little it diminishes the chances of the whole submission. Be clear and explicit about every positive, difference-making point. Advance the arguments you made last year to show progress since. If you show the researcher strong arguments and supporting evidence, then follow best practice guidelines on selecting client referees and encouraging them to reply, you can trust the directories process to achieve results for you with consistent participation.

*Note to Pats fans: I said most successful. Note to 49ers fans: I said most successful.

To put my money where my mouth is, the first US law firm wanting help drafting or editing a Chambers or Legal 500 sports law submission will get that help for free. Unless they work for the Colts.

Pretty sure peeps stopped reading a while back but, in case you’re still with me, this is the end of the article. You’ve done well. Here are some random wishes for the upcoming NFL season: Marcus Mariota plays every game. Derrick Henry plays every game. Kevin Byard plays every game. Taylor Lewan plays every game (after his suspension!). Titans win a game against the Colts (yay!). Titans go deep in the Playoffs. Browns make the Playoffs. The NFL ditches the pass interference review.

#TitanUp

About the author: my name is Mike Nash and I’m one of three specialist directories consultants at SavageNash Legal Communications, all of whom are senior former directories editors and collectively have 40 years’ experience of legal directories; two of us worked in-house in marketing & communications at international law firms. If you’d like to know more about how we could help your law firm with your directories needs, then please look around our website, use it to contact us directly or contact me via LinkedIn.

About the article: This is a SavageNash website version of an identical article uploaded simultaneously on LinkedIn.