Have the legal directories had their day?

Yes – there are better uses for our time and money

Sam Ridgway, White & Black

The legal directories are poor evidence of quality advice. It’s time to quit

Preparing submissions for major legal directories is a regular fixture of professional life. Firms invest significant time collating matter lists and drafting narratives, all in pursuit of rankings. For many, these directories remain a marker of technical standing, offering visibility and a widely understood shorthand for quality. However, questions are increasingly being asked about the cost of participation, the pressure on senior time and the extent to which rankings reflect how clients actually experience legal services.

Against this backdrop, we have begun to reassess our approach at White & Black. This year, for the first time since our founding, we decided not to submit. For us, this was not about the value of directories in the abstract, but a fundamental question of where our senior time is best spent and how we can most effectively demonstrate value to our clients.

The gap between categories and complexity

Directories often feel misaligned with how legal services are delivered. Many client challenges no longer sit neatly within a single practice area. Instead, they involve a combination of legal, financial, commercial and strategic considerations.

Legal directories, by design, categorise expertise into siloed practice areas. While useful for identifying specific technical capabilities, this structure struggles to reflect the integrated service clients experience in practice. White & Black, for example, operates as a strategic legal advisory business working with founders on growth, risk and value creation. As advisory models become even more relationship-led, firms are questioning whether rigid frameworks can capture the nuanced value a strategic partner provides.

Not submitting may be mistaken for a retreat from technical rigour, but in practice, we are not stepping away from complex work. It is not the quality of advice that is changing, but how that quality is evidenced.

The most complex instructions do not turn on a single point of law. They involve commercial judgement and navigating uncertainty. In this environment, credibility is built through outcomes delivered rather than rankings alone. Many clients stay with firms because they value access to senior advisers who operate across functions, rather than simply setting out legal positions. Rankings may form part of the picture, but they are rarely decisive once trusted relationships are established.

Where discovery happens

Submissions require substantial investment. Even with artificial intelligence tools, the process draws heavily on both lawyers and marketing teams for validation. Time spent on submissions is, ultimately, time not spent advising clients or supporting wider stakeholders.

One factor increasingly discussed is the limited role directories play in client acquisition. At White & Black, it is rare for new clients to cite directories as the reason they approached us. Conversations with peers at other firms suggest this experience is far from unique. Discovery typically happens through referrals, existing relationships, content and events, not rankings alone.

Additionally, while directories contribute to digital visibility, listing on a third-party platform does not guarantee relevance. Modern discovery is shaped by the quality of a firm’s own media and how closely it aligns with the specific needs of target clients. By reallocating the resources previously reserved for rankings, we can invest in more targeted marketing initiatives. 

This shift allows for a more sophisticated approach to client engagement, prioritising activity that is more likely to yield tangible results than broad external endorsements. For us, this prompted a straightforward question of whether submissions still represented the best use of resources. The answer was no.

Reaction from the market

Since making our decision public, the reaction has been telling. We have heard privately from partners and marketing leads across various firms. Many expressed support, noting that similar concerns had been discussed internally but rarely articulated externally.

The most common response was not to completely disregard the value of directories in principle, but to acknowledge the trade-offs. The burden on staff, return on investment measured by new client acquisition, and the widening gap between rankings and lived client experience were recurring themes. Client reaction has been more muted. For many, the decision was immaterial, though we recognise that for some, external validation remains a useful benchmark. Once a partnership is established, however, what matters most is continuity of advice and confidence that advisers are focused on specific business challenges.

Redirecting focus

By stepping back, White & Black has redirected energy into areas we believe deliver greater impact. This includes increased senior involvement in complex matters and recognition aligned more closely with technical ability and leadership.

The firm will continue to evidence expertise through initiatives such as the Thomson Reuters Stand Out Lawyers programme and The Times’ top 250 law firms. We are also introducing Project 50, an initiative reallocating the time previously spent on submissions back into the local community through our state schools access programme and Citizens Advice clinics.

Stepping away from rankings reflects a reassessment of how success is measured. For us, measuring what matters means focusing time where it makes the greatest difference for our clients, our people and the community.

Sam Ridgway is head of marketing and CSR at White & Black, Oxford

No – they remain an important weapon in a law firm’s brand-building armoury

Daniela Conte

The Legal 500 and Chambers and Partners provide clients with an opportunity to give candid feedback

To view directories as ‘ego publishing’ is to overlook the key role they play in the legal ecosystem.

The two main legal directories, Chambers and Partners and Legal 500, provide independent validation of legal expertise. They cover a multitude of legal areas and jurisdictions, and coverage evolves to reflect the legal landscape. For example, both directories added artificial intelligence categories as it became a prominent area of practice, and subcategories were introduced to the M&A category as the gap between small, medium and mega deals widened. 

The rankings and much of the accompanying commentary are free to access, and have become a useful resource for students, lawyers, clients and recruiters. Numerous niche legal directories are also published, such as GAR 100 and GCR 100, performing a similarly important role behind a paywall. 

The guides remain popular, confirmed by how often their websites crash from high traffic on publication day. They are also good business: Inflexion sold its stake in Chambers and Partners to Abry Partners in 2023 for more than £400m, which was over four times the return on its investment from five years earlier.

Despite their importance and popularity, grumbling about legal directories is a perennial pastime for partners and marketing staff. In my experience, part of the unhappiness arises from a poor understanding of how rankings are compiled. It is a thorough process that synthesises written submissions from law firms, references from multiple clients and select interviews that capture peer feedback. Law firms can pay for a ‘profile’ as a form of advertising, but no cost is involved in relation to the all-important rankings.

Year highlights

The compilation of the written submissions tends to cause most resentment, but even this administrative task brings benefits: it is a useful exercise in ‘housekeeping’ for practice groups to pull together the highlights of their year. Junior lawyers are often involved in writing these submissions, which exposes them to important marketing skills such as articulating deals, cases and advisory expertise. 

The firms that capture their work experience efficiently, on an ongoing basis throughout the year, tend to be most relaxed about compiling submissions. If you are scrambling to compile submissions by the annual deadline, which is unchanged from year to year, it may be time to review your internal processes. 

While submission-writing and the compilation of referee lists can be tedious, the publication of rankings causes much excitement and this is where legal directories show their value. 

Honest feedback

There are few opportunities for lawyers to receive candid feedback, and legal directories offer insight into how clients feel about their advisers. If firms are receiving a poor response rate to the request for references, they have learned something important. Where clients do respond, firms have access to this anonymous feedback. It would be a mistake to imagine that even self-nominated referees will always give positive responses. Unsurprisingly, the legal directories recognise how valuable this is and now offer added (paid-for) reports that share more comprehensive client feedback. 

Rankings are a comparative exercise that offers insight into market perceptions. They provide law firms with the opportunity for strategic introspection – a starting point to reflect on what progress has been made and what still needs to be done. 

The directories are also a valuable resource for clients. They provide a useful guide – and independent validation of purchasing decisions – for general counsel and legal teams. Although some clients have become frustrated by being asked to act as referees by numerous firms over several years, others welcome the opportunity to give their advisers a well-earned endorsement. 

Law firms use the annual rankings and commentary extensively in their marketing collateral: they are proudly displayed in client pitches, liberally sprinkled on websites, shared in graduate brochures and highlighted in annual reports. Inevitably, ranked lawyers and firms promote their recognition on LinkedIn, with humble and not-so-humble brags. 

Online benefits

The directories also boost online profile for law firms by increasing search engine optimisation – anyone looking for quality legal advice via web searches will quickly encounter the directory rankings. 

More esoterically, the rankings have a special meaning to lawyers, whether they are ranked themselves or in the pride of being part of a prestigious team. Lawyers are high-performing personality types; they can be dismissive of rankings, but many are privately pleased for their excellence to be publicly acknowledged – as they are entitled to be. 

Legal directories are far from perfect. The submission process can be cumbersome, categories do not always perfectly capture how the legal work happens in practice and rankings are too slow at reflecting shifts in the market. But without them, there would be no trustworthy way to analyse the profession in a quantitative and qualitative way. Relying on AI to aggregate or editorialise – with little oversight of quality – would benefit those law firms with enormous marketing budgets. It would also result in a proliferation of industry awards, as the instinct to compare and compete would still exist – so, writing submissions would still be a reality.

For the time being, legal directories remain an important resource for many, and a tool in a law firm’s armoury for brand building and business development. 

Daniela Conte is a brand consultant with a wide experience of senior in-house roles