Significant Change To U.S. News/Best Lawyers Law Firm Rankings
US News & World Report has announced that the publication will drop their controversial effort to rank law firms and will instead adopt an alphabetical listing in a "tiered" rating system instead. The "best law firms rankings will be published alphabetically within tiers rather than as a numerical ranking.
"They finally reached the conclusion that the validity in such a ranking system is flawed: "firms were often separated by small or insignificant differences in the overall score." This was just one of the major concerns with the proposed ranking system," said Hilary Guthrie, Director of Planning and Business Development at Harris Beach PLLC in Pittsford, NY.
Nearly 2,000 law firm marketing directors and administrators fell prey to the latest in a serious of meaningless rankings, by feeding information to the magazine. It's too bad. They should have read Only 3% of Legal Work is Influenced by Directories. See also Do Chambers Ratings Matter? NO. "Only private practitioners refer to these directories. Business leaders/owners and in-house counsel are not influenced by them," Guthrie said.
Here's the catch: to be considered in the US News ratings, a law firm must be included in yet another directory: to be eligible for a metropolitan area rating, a firm has to have at least one lawyer listed in Best Lawyers.
So how do you get into Best Lawyers? Pathway No. 1 is to be in it already. Every lawyer in the previous edition is nominated for inclusion in the next edition. It's not different from a self-perpetuating club. The public can "nominate" lawyers, but they don't count very much, according to the Best Lawyers FAQ.
Pathway No. 2 is to have a lawyer nominate you. However, the voters for existing lawyer categories consists of all lawyers who are currently listed. As a result, many "best lawyers" are members of the older generation.
The US News effort is basically a clumsy ploy to sell ads, magazines and directories. Described most generously, it is a cross-marketing effort between two directories trying to survive in a market where directories don't matter.
The U.S. News-Best Lawyers Best Law Firms rankings, are scheduled to be released on its website in mid-September. Everyone who loves a popularity contest will be sure to read it.
Larry -
Thank you so much for this piece. I recently posted a similar article for the New York State Bar Association entitled, Dear Michael Getnick, Don't be a "Gray Davis":
http://nysbar.com/blogs/smallfirmville/2010/06/dear_michael_getnick_dont_be_a_1.html)
I am glad someone with a bigger audience than mine is voicing an opinion on the law firm rankings.
Unfortunatley, I am less optimistic than you about the extent to which businesses will rely on the rankings. The public takes U.S. News & World Report more seriously than SuperLawyers and the like. Parents of law students rely heavily, even exclusively, on the Law School Ratings (I can attest to this personally.)
Unranked small firms which compete with small firms composed of biglaw defectors can only hope that the public's attitude doesn't carry over to U.S. News' latest sham.
I agree that the current law firm rankings are flawed. When I was looking into starting my law career, I wanted to get as much information as I could about the firms I could end up working for. Vault gave me a lot of great insider information that went beyond just law firm rankings. They really helped me figure out which firm would be right for me. I would suggest them to anyone who is starting out.