The Science Behind Best Lawyers: Insights to Maximize Your Law Firm’s Recognition

[00:00:00] Elizabeth Petit: When we get to reviewing the data, and then you, marketing teams will say, “Hey, we’re really, you know, tell us why this person didn’t make it,” and they were nominated in the wrong practice area. This is the time to help us stop that from happening at the beginning by making sure they’re in the right area.

[00:00:21] Announcer: Welcome to Spill the Ink, a podcast by Reputation Ink, where we feature experts in growth and brand visibility for law firms and architecture, engineering and construction firms. Now, let’s get started with the show.

[00:00:38] Michelle Calcote King: Hi everyone. I’m Michelle Calcote King. I’m your host, and I’m the principal and president of Reputation Ink. We are a public relations and thought leadership marketing agency for B2B professional services firms, including law firms. To learn more, go to rep-ink.com. 

So legal ranking season is upon us and Best Lawyers is one of the big rankings law firms and lawyers go to battle over.

Best Lawyers has used the same peer-reviewed methodology to review lawyers and law firms since 1983. Its goal is to capture the consensus opinion of leading lawyers about the professional abilities of their colleagues within the same region and practice area. Today we’re going to be talking about best practices to set your firm up for success even before voting begins.

I’m happy to welcome for the second time Elizabeth Petit, she’s the vice president of research and development at Best Lawyers, to our podcast. So welcome.

[00:01:38] Elizabeth Petit: Oh, thank you Michelle. Thank you so much for having me.

[00:01:41] Michelle Calcote King: Yeah, I’m excited to talk about this because our clients are very focused on these sorts of things. So tell me a little bit about your role at Best Lawyers.

[00:01:50] Elizabeth Petit: Yep. So I’ve been with Best Lawyers now since 2010, and my department is responsible for all of the data collection and for producing our Best Lawyers, Ones to Watch and Best Law Firms awards.

[00:02:05] Michelle Calcote King: Great. Well, let’s start with the biggest misconception. So how is Best Lawyers not just a popularity contest?

[00:02:18] Elizabeth Petit: Absolutely. So because our lawyer awards are exclusively peer review, from time to time we do get the question of how is this not just a popularity contest? And while we do believe that the client’s experience with a lawyer is extremely valuable, a client is going to think to themself, “Did the lawyer answer my phone calls? Did they get the outcome I want? Did they charge me too much money?” And so we’ve always believed that it’s truly the lawyers who know how good another lawyer is at practicing law. But because we are exclusively peer review, we did not want lawyers to be able just to game the system.

And so each candidate and each voter has their own score. And so as a voter, the diversity of scores that I give means that my scores are weighted higher or lower.

[00:03:15] Michelle Calcote King: Oh, interesting.

[00:03:16] Elizabeth Petit: Think of it like Uber or Airbnb. The driver and the rider both have a score. The person who rents the house and who owns the house have a score.

So if I’m a voter and I say everyone is the best lawyer, my votes are weighted lower. If I say everyone is a terrible lawyer, I would never recommend them, my votes are weighted lower because we feel like you’re not giving us honest feedback.

[00:03:43] Michelle Calcote King: Mm. Yeah. That’s a really interesting way to do it. And I love the comparison to Uber. I’m one of those people that checks my rating. So tell me about the various factors that influence vote weighting. You started to kind of answer that, but I’d love to know a little bit more.

[00:04:03] Elizabeth Petit: Yep. So we have statistical guardrails. It’s the variety of feedback that you give, how much feedback you give. If you just give one person a vote, that’s not enough. How long you’ve been awarded. If you are a managing partner, a practice area head. If you’ve been named Lawyer of the Year. So all of the data that we have about you as an individual and your voting behavior can influence how much your vote is weighted higher or lower.

And so we do that because again, it is in our best interest for the voting to be fair and as unbiased as possible so that the reflection of voting feels authentic to the community.

[00:04:47] Michelle Calcote King: Yeah. Yeah. So given that, what are some best practices that law firms should follow, you know, as they work on their nominations?

[00:04:59] Elizabeth Petit: Yep. So for nominating an individual, we recommend for Best Lawyers that a candidate has been in practice for 10 years. They usually have made partner and so they’ve built up a name and a reputation because what we ask voters is, “If you could not take a case, how likely would you be to refer your client to this individual?”

[00:05:23] Michelle Calcote King: Hmm.

[00:05:23] Elizabeth Petit: And it’s all based on your practice area and your jurisdiction. So if you’re a family lawyer in Atlanta, you’re going to vote on other family lawyers in Atlanta.

[00:05:33] Michelle Calcote King: Got it.

[00:05:34] Elizabeth Petit: For our Ones to Watch awards, these were first released in 2020 and these are for lawyers earlier in their career because we know you don’t just wake up as a partner and all of a sudden you’re practicing excellent legal practice.

So we recommend you’ve been in practice for five to nine years. Typically you’re a senior associate, and again, you’ve built up a name and a reputation for yourself so that other senior associates would know your name and could give feedback on your work.

[00:06:05] Michelle Calcote King: Got it. Okay. So most of our listeners are the marketing directors in the law firms. What is their role in this and how can they assist in improving their firm’s rankings and their lawyers’ rankings?

[00:06:20] Elizabeth Petit: Yep. So the majority of our nominations do come from in-house marketing teams. My recommendation is that you nominate an individual in up to three practice areas for the first time. Pick the practice areas that they are most known for in the field, and then once they are awarded, you can always add additional practice areas. But if you start by picking like seven or 10, we see some really ambitious nominations sometimes. You run the risk of spreading the votes and then maybe they get a couple of votes in every practice area, and that’s not enough to get them awarded in anything. So pick what they’re really known for and also pick the people who your firm really wants to spotlight first. There are no caps. It’s not like you can only nominate 5% of your firm. But I always just advise internally, you know the politics at your firm. So pick who you feel really should be put forward first. And then follow up with maybe the next class of associates and more junior partners.

[00:07:34] Michelle Calcote King: Got it. Okay. So helping them narrow their focus, get them to really only nominate in those areas that they’re really known for so that it’s not too diluted. Mm-hmm. Great, great. How do you, you mentioned the Ones to Watch, how do you kind of transition or decide when to transition an attorney from Ones to Watch to Best Lawyers without like creating a gap or confusion?

[00:07:59] Elizabeth Petit: Yep. So Ones to Watch isn’t traditionally an under-40 list because we know that a lot of people enter the profession later in life or may take a break in their professional career. So it really is for those who’ve been in practice for about five to nine years. However, you cannot remain in the Ones to Watch category forever, just like you couldn’t be under 40 forever. Unfortunately for us. Yeah, exactly. So we do track the year that a lawyer passes the bar. We track how long they’ve been in practice and we also rely on the firms to sort of give guidance on when it’s time to transition them from a Ones to Watch candidate to Best Lawyers.

Now, the Ones to Watch candidates aren’t a feeder list. You don’t just go from Ones to Watch to Best Lawyers. You do have to be nominated in Best Lawyers, and then you’re voted by that pool.

[00:09:01] Michelle Calcote King: Got it.

[00:09:01] Elizabeth Petit: And there usually is a break for a year or two because you go from being voted on by other lawyers who are your peers, your senior associates, to being voted on by those managing partners and practice area heads. And you may not have built up a reputation that you are known in that next level quite yet. So it really is very common that you may see a year or two break in your awards history before being recognized in the Best Lawyers group.

[00:09:34] Michelle Calcote King: Got it. Okay. That’s really helpful. What about AI? So do you guys see your rankings impacting AI searches? And likewise, how is AI impacting how you sort and rank lawyers, if at all?

[00:09:54] Elizabeth Petit: Yep. So we put a lot of effort into improving the content on our website, SEO, so that we are attractive to AI so that as we know, most people are using AI to answer questions these days over Google or other internet searches. So we’re being very future-forward in trying to put our lawyers in front of AI. We also have an internal AI tool. It’s called Smithy AI, and that’s available for firms and it will help you generate content very easily for articles, profiles. We’re working on advancements to help you create announcement materials. So click a button, it makes a press release for you. It makes email announcements, social media assets. So we have taken our data, our proprietary data, and leveraged AI to help make your jobs easier as well. What AI doesn’t do is it doesn’t impact the rankings themselves. So they’ve always been based on massive amounts of data and quantitative analysis. And so we always had statistical algorithms and we’ve always used math to determine the awards, and that’s always been protected. So there’s no need for AI to sort of make that more efficient because we already have developed a very efficient system for our data analysis.

[00:11:30] Michelle Calcote King: Hmm, that makes sense. So is there anything else I haven’t asked you that is important for, you know, marketing directors, attorneys to know as they get ready to submit themselves in the firms?

[00:11:46] Elizabeth Petit: So nominations for the U.S. are due on December 15. And firms will receive three email reminders to review your data. So now is the best time to make sure that we have the right people captured in the right practice areas. Because we do accept nominations from clients, from the public, from lawyers and marketing teams, it’s the best time to make sure that they’re in the right field. Maybe they’ve changed the nature of work they’re doing. Or maybe a client just, you know, doesn’t honestly know the difference between plaintiffs and defense. You’d be surprised how often that happens. So help us make sure your lawyers are in the right areas for voting because when we get to reviewing the data and then you, marketing teams will say, “Hey, we’re really, you know, tell us why this person didn’t make it,” and they were nominated in the wrong practice area. This is the time to help us stop that from happening at the beginning by making sure they’re in the right area.

[00:12:43] Michelle Calcote King: That’s great. Okay. Yeah, that very good action steps. Well thank you so much. I’ve appreciated this rundown and I know our listeners will too. So we have been talking to Elizabeth Petit of Best Lawyers. Thank you for your time today.

[00:12:59] Elizabeth Petit: Oh, thank you. Always happy to be here.[00:13:04] Announcer: Thanks for listening to Spill the Ink, a podcast by Reputation Ink. We’ll see you again next time and be sure to click subscribe to get future episodes.